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Lyman,  Albert  Josiah,  1845 
1915. 

The  Christian  pastor  in  th 
new  age 


THE 

CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

IN  THE  NEW  AGE  ^^ ' '■' 


( 


MOV  I  2  1! 

COMRADE^SPONSOR— SOCIAL  MEDIATOR 


Lectures  for  1909  on  the  George  Shepard  Foundation 
Bangor  Theological  Seminary 


BY  / 

ALBERT  JOSIAH  LYMAN 

Author  of  *'  Preaching  in  the  Nenv  Age^ 
"A  Plain  Man's  Working  Vie^w  of 
Biblical  Inspiration j''  etc. 


SECOND  EDITION 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  ^  CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1909,  by 
THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  &  COMPANY 


Published^  November^  1909 


This  little  volume  is  dedicated  and  inscribed 
in  affectionate  honor  to  my  beloved  people  of 
the  South  Congregational  Church  and  Parish, 
Brooklyn,  whose  unswerving  fellowship  has  been 
my  joy  and  song  during  all  the  six  and  thirty 
years  of  my  ministry  among  them,  and  in  whose 
faith  and  patience  and  wonderful  unity  of  kind- 
ness I  have  seemed  to  find  both  clear  warrant 
and  noble  witness  for  that  view  of  the  Christian 
Pastorate  which,  in  tribute  to  them,  is  here  loV' 
ingly,  though  imperfectly,  outlined. 
October  24,  1909. 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

President's  House, 
Bangor  Theological   Seminary, 
Bangor,  Maine. 
'My  dear  Dr.  Lyman: 

Dr.  George  Shepard,  Professor  of  Homi- 
letics  in  Bangor  Theological  Seminary  from 
1836  to  1868,  was  one  of  the  great  preachers 
of  his  time,  decHning  invitations  to  pulpits  in 
Boston  and  New  York  in  order  to  do  his  loved 
work  of  teaching. 

Your  lectures  were  the  "  George  Shepard  " 
Lectures  on  Preaching  and  Pastoral  Service, 
named  in  his  honor.  You  were  the  fifth  in- 
cumbent of  the  lectureship,  following  Dr. 
Charles  E.  Jefferson,  Dr.  Amory  H.  Bradford, 
Professor  Hugh  Black,  D.  D.,  and  Professor 
Edward  C.  Moore,  D.  D.  These  lectures  came 
in  "  Convocation  Week,"  February  1-5,  1909, 
and  your  associated  lecturers  on  other  Founda- 
tions for  the  year  were  Dr.  Hamilton  W.  Ma- 
bie,  of  The  Outlook,  New  York,  and  Professor 


vi  PREFATORY   NOTE 

Harlan  P.  Beach,  D.  D.,  of  Yale  University. 
You  and  your  associates  spoke  day  after  day 
to  a  great  company  of  Students,  Ministers, 
Teachers,  and  citizens  of  Eastern  Maine,  who, 
with  the  most  eager  and  responsive  enthusiasm 
listened  to  the  noble  and  inspiring  addresses. 

Your  lectures,  in  addition  to  their  high  gen- 
eral excellence,  were  enhanced  in  value  be- 
cause you  had  previously  visited  our  students 
at  Bangor,  and  had  privately  conferred  with 
them  about  their  felt  personal  needs,  so  that 
the  laboratory  or  inductive  method  might  be 
adopted  throughout. 

The  effect  of  the  lectures  was  moving  and 
profound.  It  will  remain  with  your  auditors 
all  their  lives.  It  will  distinctly  mark  for  good 
many  pastorates. 

Our  Faculty  rejoices  to  learn  that  you  are 
to  give  these  lectures  a  wider  circulation 
through  the  printed  page.  Nothing  is  more 
needed  in  our  time  than  a  renewal  of  power 
in  the  pastorate.  If  you  shall  be  willing  to 
retain  the  direct  and  personal  phrasing  of  the 
lectures,  they  will  be,  I  am  sure,  all  the  more 
effective  because  of  their  more  intimate  appeal 
thereby. 

Let  me  afresh  thank  you  for  your  work  in 


PREFATORY    NOTE  vli 

the  name  of  our  Faculty  and  Students.    Permit 
me  to  remain,  my  dear  Doctor  Lyman, 
Ever  gratefully  and  affectionately  yours, 

David  N.  Beach. 

October  23,  1909. 


FOREWORD 

I  HAVE  yielded,  with  no  little  misgiving,  to 
the  courteous  urgency  of  the  Class  of  1909  in 
Bangor  Theological  Seminary,  reinforced  by 
the  generous  consent  of  its  President  and  the 
Faculty,  asking  that  the  Lectures  delivered 
before  the  class  during  "  Convocation  Week  " 
last  February,  upon  the  "George  Shepard " 
Foundation,  and  relating  to  some  aspects  of 
the  Pastoral  Office  in  our  Modern  Time  should 
be  put  in  type. 

My  misgiving  has  to  do  with  both  the  form 
and  the  substance  of  these  addresses.  As  to 
form,  there  is  none  to  speak  of.  The  Lectures 
are  informal  Talks  merely,  with  no  preten- 
sion to  literary  finish, — 3.  handful  of  hints 
rather  than  a  treatise,  a  challenge  at  the  gate, 
not  intended  for  veterans  or  for  experts,  but 
thrown  out,  in  the  manner  of  quick-fire  con- 
versation, to  meet,  at  once  and  on  the  level, 
the  eager  and  high  interrogation  of  a  group 
of  young  men  standing  at  the  gateway  of 
a  great  vocation.     They  are  therefore  much 


X  FOREWORD 

more  suited  to  the  entente  cordiale  of  the  mo- 
ment between  speaker  and  hearer,  than  to  the 
cooler  scrutiny  of  the  critical  reader. 

As  to  substance,  the  deficiency  is  still 
greater.  Speaking  under  sharp  limitations  of 
time,  the  effort  was  to  bring  out  a  single 
generic  conception  of  what  might  be  called  the 
modern  pastoral  consciousness,  rather  than  to 
present  a  complete  account  of  the  Pastoral 
Office.  The  speaker  assumes  much  which  a 
more  formal  discussion  must  labor  to  prove. 
The  talks  start  with  the  professional  "  rein  " 
loose,  and  do  not  "draw  rein"  till  the  close. 
This  leads  to  many  omissions — and  quite  pos- 
sibly involves  an  impression  of  incompleteness 
and  confusion. 

One  must  in  fairness  add  also  the  fact 
that  these  Lectures — to  call  them  such — 
deal  with  what  is  supposed  to  be  the  more 
perfunctory  and  humdrum  phase  of  our  profes- 
sional duty,  as  contrasted  with  the  preaching 
phase  of  it.  Preaching  and  pastoral  serv- 
ice do  indeed  interplay.  On  the  higher  level 
each  pole  of  the  ministerial  battery  is  alive 
with  the  power  shot  over  from  the  other  pole, 
and  the  vital  fire  in  both  is  one.  And  this 
is  truer  than  ever  now,  for  the  Modern  Age 


FOREWORD  XI 

blends  preacher  and  pastor  as  no  other  age 
ever  has,  in  the  figure  of  the  one  spiritual 
teacher  and  leader. 

But  the  sense  of  this,  which  is  readily; 
poured  into  the  excitement  of  oral  address,  is 
not  so  easily  imparted  to  the  printed  page, 
and  this  little  volume  will  at  first  therefore 
seem  to  be  a  prosy  review  of  the  prosy  half 
of  the  minister's  duty. 

Still,  on  the  other  hand,  to  rewrite  the  Lec- 
tures, to  expand  them  with  ampler  citation  and 
discussion,  to  fill  out  the  gaps  they  leave  open, 
or  to  take  out  from  them  the  spontaneous  and 
personal  note  of  free,  spoken  address— would 
be  to  substitute  something  else  for  what^  was 
given  at  Bangor,  and  which  I  am  so  kindly 
asked  to  reproduce. 

In  such  a  plight,  I  have  only  to  make  a  vir- 
tue of  audacity,  and  ask  the  kind  reader  to 
overlook  the  deficiences  which  the  kind  hearer 
did  not  have  time  enough  to  notice,  and 
which,  on  second  thought,  both  hearer  and 
reader— and  above  all,  the  speaker  himself— 
will  find  it  hard  to  excuse  and  impossible  to 

explain. 

A.  J.  t. 

Brooklyn,  New  York, 
October,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

LECTURE   I 

PAGE 

Introductory.   The  Pastoral  Spirit    ....        i 

LECTURE   II 
The  Pastor  as  Comrade  and  Counsellor     .     .      25 

LECTURE   III 

The   Pastor  as   Spiritual  Sponsor  and   Social 

Mediator 65 

LECTURE    IV 
The  Pastor  as  Parish  Organizer  and  Leader    .     109 

LECTURE   V 
The  Pastor  as  Preacher      .....     .,    ..    143 


LECTURE  I 

INTRODUCTORY.  THE  PASTORAL 
SPIRIT 


INTRODUCTORY.     THE  PASTORAL 
SPIRIT 

Mr,  President,  Gentlemen  of  the  Faculty  and 
Members  of  the  Classes: 

In  one  brief  word  may  I  offer  you  my  salu- 
tation, and  thank  you  for  the  honor  of  stand- 
ing here  among  you,  less,  indeed,  as  a  lecturer 
than  as  a  fellow  student,  to  speak  with  you 
concerning  some  of  the  present  practical  as- 
pects of  our  vocation. 

It  seems  fitting  that  I  should  at  the  outset 
allude  for  a  moment  to  the  personal  method  we 
shall  employ  in  our  discussion. 

I  owe  my  choice  of  a  theme  not  only  to  the 
freedom  permitted  under  the  generous  terms 
of  the  "  George  Shepard "  Foundation  upon 
which  I  speak,  but  especially  also  to  the  equally 
generous  suggestion  of  the  President. 

He  informed  me  that  our  professional  field 
on  its  side  of  preaching  had  been  already  cov- 
ered by  previous  lectures  upon  this   founda- 


4  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

tion;  but  that  the  pastoral  side  of  the  minis- 
ter's life  had  not  received  similar  separate  pres- 
lentation;  and  he  encouraged  me  to  select  this 
plainer  and  more  sequestered  function  of  the 
ministry  as  our  special  subject. 

Our  theme,  then,  may  take  this  phrasing: 

The  Christian  Pastor  in  the  New.  !Age. 

I  emphasize  the  latter  half  of  this  title,  be- 
cause, if  I  do  not  mistake,  certain  features  oi 
pastoral  service,  always  vital,  are  thrown  by 
the  spirit  of  our  age  into  a  new  and  noble 
relief. 

Indeed,  we  may  put  the  point  even  more 
strongly.  Standing  in  his  full  free  manhood, 
in  closest  contact  with  the  age  itself,  his  "  bare 
feet  on  the  bare  earth  " — to  recall  Dr.  Stalk- 
er's phrase  in  his  "ordination  charge,"  the 
young  pastor  of  our  time  discovers  that  the 
two  ideas  in  human  conduct  which  Modern 
Sociology  counts  as  of  most  instant  value, 
viz.,  personal  comradeship  and  social  media- 
tion, are  precisely  the  two  which  denote  the 
finest  pastoral  efficiency, — ^so  that  we  redis- 
cover, as  it  were,  the  heart  of  the  ancient  Pas- 
torate in  listening  to  the  characteristic  demand 
of  the  New  Age. 


THE  PASTORAL   SPIRIT  5 

It  is  the  zest  of  such  rediscovery  which  gives 
the  present  speaker  courage  to  add  another 
v^ord  upon  this  rather  hackneyed  subject  of 
Pastoral  duty,  and  it  is  the  notion  of  such  a 
quest  which  will  govern  the  method  of  our 
talks  together. 

My  first  business  therefore  was  to  learn  from 
you  as  students  in  definite  particulars  what  you 
feel,  and  want  and  need.  It  is  the  content  of 
your  mind  as  a  contemporary  modern  product 
that  is  the  thing  of  primary  value  and  authority 
here.  The  genius  of  this  lectureship  is  clinical 
rather  than  speculative,  and  fraternal  most  of  all. 

This  method  also  will  enable  me  to  set  these 
simple  talks  into  the  position  where  they  be- 
long with  reference  to  your  Seminary  Curric- 
ulum. I  realize  that  in  the  presence  of  pro- 
fessors accomplished  in  teaching  the  tech^ 
nique  both  of  preaching  and  of  pastoral  serv- 
ke,  any  formal  review  of  the  theory  and  duty 
of  the  pastorate  would  be  as  needless  as  it 
would  be  impertinent.  I  may  assume  your 
general  acquaintance  with  the  subject.  You 
know  the  standard  books,  the  leading  authori- 
ties, the  established  divisions  and  definitions. 

It  was,  accordingly,  the  attempt  to  comply 
with  what  I  felt  to  be  this  primary  duty  of  the 


6  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

lectureship,  when  I  arranged  to  spend  a  weelc 
with  you  here  last  November,  to  meet  the 
members  of  the  senior  class,  both  as  a  body 
and  individually,  desiring,  by  the  frankest 
possible  conference  upon  the  problems  of  in- 
stant practical  import  -in  your  minds,  to  learn 
from  you  what  you  feel  to  he  vital  in  the  work 
of  the  Christian  pastor,  not  only  as  to  its 
old  genius  and  spirit,  but  as  to  its  present 
arena  of  action,  its  immediate  conditions 
and  difficulties,  and  its  thrilling  and  overmas- 
tering inspirations.  So  I  might  seek,  by 
the  analysis  of  your  own  present  consciousness 
concerning  your  vocation,  to  determine  how 
that  vocation  itself  should  now  be  construed, 
and  how  the  ancient  Pastoral  Spirit  rearticu- 
lates  itself  in  response  to  modern  demands. 

You  met  me  frankly  more  than  half  way. 
You  disclosed,  indeed,  your  misgivings.  I 
caught  the  muffled  beat  of  that  inner  appre- 
hension which  a  true  man  must  feel,  though 
he  does  not  parade  it,  in  responding  to  the 
tremendous  challenge  of  this  rocking  age. 

I  looked  also  upon  the  vivid  picture  you 
drew  for  me  from  the  life,  of  the  difficulties 
existing  in  many  of  our  New  England  par- 
ishes where  you  had  been  at  work.    Listening 


THE  PASTORAL  SPIRIT  7 

to  you  I  felt  again,  as  I  did  forty  years  ago, 
the  tremor  of  the  young  man's  question — and 
the  older  man's  also — Who  is  sufficient  for 
these  things? 

But  I  discovered  also  something  more, 
namely,  that  the  picture  of  the  pastoral  ideal, 
which  you,  as  young  modern  men,  are  thus 
carrying  in  your  minds,  is  really  the  true  de- 
lineation of  what  the  New  Age  is  calling  for 
in  the  Christian  Pastor,  and  I  went  back  to  my 
study,  vowing  that  I  had  in  honor  and  in 
truth  but  one  single  thing  to  do,  and  that  was 
to  put  into  the  clearest  possible  expression 
these  queryings  and  verdicts  of  your  own 
minds,  swiftly  correlating  them  with  the  per- 
sonal experience  of  an  older  soldier  in  the 
same  battle. 

I  had  then  in  a  moment,  the  warrant  for 
my  method,  which  was  to  listen  to  you, — to 
what  your  modern  souls  are  asserting,  not  as 
by  intention  but  half  unaware, — and  if  I 
could  seize  upon  this,  articulate  it,  and  simply 
arrange  it  in  an  order  of  progression,  I  should 
have  my  lectures:  So  that  you, — and  here  is 
the  idea, — you  should  be  the  teachers  of  your- 
selves. 

You  are  the  sons  of  the  New  Age,  as  we 


8  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

older  men  are  not.  You  feel  its  mother-throb 
in  your  veins.  In  the  spontaneous  mental 
movement  within  you,  in  the  psychological 
and  spiritual  forces  which  have  brought  you 
to  these  halls  and  which  will  send  you  forth 
from  them,  do  I  find  the  germ  and  norm  of  all 
I  have  to  say. 

The  main  content  of  this  your  apprehension 
of  your  calling  seemed  to  fall  naturally  under 
three  affirmations: 

1.  The  Pastor  is  a  human  comrade  and 
counsellor. 

2.  The  Pastor  is  a  Spiritual  sponsor  and 
guide, 

3.  The  Pastor  is  a  social  mediator  in  a  dis- 
tracted age. 

First,  Comradeship. 

At  the  very  forefront  of  your  thought  lay 
the  vivid  conviction  that  the  Christian  Pas- 
torate must  be  first  and  last  and  all  the  time 
fraternal.  Your  words,  moreover,  reflected 
the  fact  that  this  principle  of  human  brother- 
hood, as  identifying  the  pastorate,  is  receiving, 
at  this  very  moment,  a  new  emphasis  by  what 
is  freshest  in  the  movement  of  our  age.  It  is, 
you  told  me,  the  age  of  the  cosmopolitan  fra- 
ternity, and  upon  its  unfurling  banners  burns 


THE  PASTORAL   SPIRIT  9 

forth  that  very  word  comrade  as  never  be- 
fore. 

Second,  Sponsorship. 

Hard  upon  this  sense  of  the  primary  place 
of  the  fraternal  spirit  in  a  true  pastorate  fol- 
lowed, however,  something  more.  It  is  the 
reverberation  in  your  modern  dialect  of  an 
ancient  and  holy  sentiment,  as  old  as  Sinai,  as 
old  as  religious  worship  itself,  and  in  the 
Christian  centuries  sanctified  under  every  type 
of  doctrine  and  ritual,  to  the  effect  that  the 
pastoral  office  is  not  only  fraternal,  but  is  also, 
in  a  true  sense,  spiritual  and  priestly,  so  that 
the  words  sponsor  and  priest  convey  a  mean- 
ing which  no  travesty  upon  that  meaning  can 
wholly  discredit. 

"As  Thou  didst  send  me  into  the  world, 
even  so  I  sent  them  into  the  world,"  are 
words  which  the  Fourth  Gospel  credibly  as- 
cribes to  Jesus. 

They  cannot  be  elided  in  any  Scriptural 
statement  of  the  ministry. 

Not  that  we  are  shut  up  to  the  sacramen- 
tarian  view  of  the  method  of  this  divine  be- 
stowal, although  there  is  an  element  of  truth 
even  in  that  view  which  has  attracted  many  of 
the  noblest  Christian  ministers,  and  which  we 


10  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

must  honor  and  incorporate  in  any  complete 
statement  of  the  pastoral  office. 

I  do  not  care  for  the  mere  word  "priest." 
It  is  apt  to  be  misunderstood.  I  have  used  it 
for  the  instant  so  as  to  mark  the  thing  I 
would  describe.  Perhaps  the  better  word  is 
Sponsor.  The  Pastor  is  a  sponsor  for  men — 
an  "Ambassador  of  Christ,"  whose  relation 
to  his  King  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  men  on 
the  other,  is  peculiarly  intimate.  "  As  though 
God  were  entreating  by  us,"  is  the  cry  of  that 
perfervid  Paul. 

All  noble  religions,  and  Christianity  pre- 
eminently, unite  to  present  the  Religious 
Teacher  as  the  Spokesman,  in  some  degree,  for 
the  Unseen  Eternal.  The  Christian  pastor  is 
the  spiritual  confidant,  the  confessor,  in  the 
worthy  sense,  of  his  people. 

In  the  most  personal  and  tremendous  issues 
of  human  life,  its  sins  and  repentance,  its 
calamity  and  despair,  at  its  crisis  of  struggle 
and  at  the  hour  of  death,  the  Christian  Pas- 
tor stands  sponsor  for  men,  solemnly  realiz- 
ing and  humbly  declaring  the  attitude  of  the 
Infinite,  as  revealed  through  Christ. 

Third,  Mediatorship. 

I  shall  not  be  misunderstood.     The  Pas- 


THE  PASTORAL   SPIRIT  ii 

tor's  mediation  is  no  usurpation  of  the  Media- 
tion of  Christ.  The  human  Pastor  is  the  sec- 
ondary medium,  through  whom  that  great 
Mediation  is  reaHzed.  But  as  we  talked  to- 
gether a  few  weeks  ago,  I  discovered  that  your 
sense  of  the  majesty  and  deHcacy  of  this 
higher  office  of  the  Pastorate  expressed  itself 
in  the  idea  of  the  Pastor  as  the  social  mediator 
among  men  in  the  midst  of  the  confused  and 
warring  factions  of  our  time. 

You  also  held  to  it  that  the  process  of  such 
secondary  mediation  is  natural  and  ethical,  not 
sacramentarian.  Christ's  Mediatorial  power 
and  grace  are  realized  in  the  Pastor's  char^ 
acter,  not  in  his  mere  oiRce,  It  is  the  beauty 
of  a  consecrated  and  winnowed  manhood 
which  becomes  the  agent  for  this  secondary 
mediation. 

The  logic  of  all  this,  as  we  maintain,  there- 
fore, does  not  go  to  affirm  that  this  quasi- 
mediatorial  function  is  an  official  exercise  of 
a  specific,  and,  as  it  were,  extra-human  gift, 
bestowed  de  facto  at  ordination ;  but  it  goes  to 
the  point  of  affirming  a  certain  definite  divine 
assistance  to  the  minister's  own  faculties  in 
undertaking  his  specific  service. 

The  true  priest  is  not  made  such  by  arbi- 


12  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

trary  ecclesiastical  enactment  or  any  mere  ex- 
ternal "  laying  on  of  hands  "  so  as  to  consti- 
tute him  a  vicegerent,  a  formal  dispenser  of 
celestial  benedictions.  These  statutory  and 
exclusive  theories  of  the  priesthood  dwindle 
into  palpable  unreality  in  front  of  the  terrible 
challenge  of  actual  pastoral  experience.  But 
all  the  more  because  you  disavow  the  formal- 
ism of  the  High  Church  view,  do  you  insist 
upon  the  spiritual  reality  which  lies  behind 
that  view  and  behind  fevery  profound  vijew  of 
the  Christian  Pastorate. 

You  declare,  because  the  heart  of  the  Chris- 
tian ages,  including  the  present  age,  declares 
that  only  a  mediatorial  soul  can  exercise  a 
mediatorial  office,  but  such  a  soul  can,  A 
noble  and  consecrated  manhood,  whose  wealth 
and  volume  of  sympathy  is  carried  up  to  the 
point  of  spiritual  indentification  with  human 
need  on  the  one  side  and  with  divine  grace  on 
the  other,  can  be  in  a  true  sense  priestly. 

We  reach,  then,  the  conception,  in  which, 
translating  your  own  apprehension,  I  discover 
the  latent  consciousness  of  our  age,  that  the 
spiritually  sponsorlike  and  mediatorial  element 
in  the  pastorate  is  developed  out  of  the  Chris- 


THE   PASTORAL    SPIRIT  13 

tianly  fraternal.  It  is  not  a  new  endowment 
or  function,  coupled  on  to  that  sense  of  com- 
radeship, which  a  moment  ago  we  called  the 
primary  element  of  the  Pastorate.  On  the 
contrary,  this  latter,  if  carried  high  enough 
and  fulfilled  in  Christ's  way,  involves  and 
leads  up  into  the  former. 

May  I  say  that  the  idea  of  this  development 
is  to  be  our  keynote  in  these  addresses  ? 

In  the  process  of  this  mental  development, 
and  indeed  from  its  very  inception,  something 
does  indeed  flow  down  from  Christ  into  the 
minister's  heart — (so  you  declared  your  sense 
of  the  thing) — ^a  distinct  Divine  help,  though 
availing  itself  of  the  normal  psychological 
channels,  appearing  as  a  deepening  of  motive, 
a  vivifying  of  consciousness,  a  facilitating  of 
growth,  an  unlocking  of  latent  power,  in  a 
word,  the  realization  of  an  impelling  force, 
which  fills  the  normal  channels  of  mental  ex- 
perience and  development  with  a  fuller  vol- 
ume of  power,  to  help  the  pastor  for  and  in  his 
Specific  pastoral  service. 

But  we  shall  maintain  that  Christlike  broth- 
erhood opens  the  only  psychological  path  along 
which  this  higher  priestly  gift  can  be  realized. 


14  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

Altruistic  devotion  in  Christ's  way  and  name 
is  the  only  gate  to  the  exercise  of  true  priest- 
hood in  His  Name. 

You  will,  of  course,  recognize  in  a  mo- 
ment that  in  thus  opening  our  line  of  thought, 
we  are  assuming,  without  argument,  the  essen- 
tial truth  contained  in  the  Irenic  Christian 
Faith  in  Christ  as  the  Living  Master  and  Di- 
vine Redeemer. 

If  the  position  of  the  fextreme  rationalism 
be  adopted,  if  the  objective  reality  of  this 
spiritual  realm  be  discredited,  if  Christ's  life 
continues  effective  only  in  the  way  of  noble 
example  and  the  heroes  and  martyrs  of  faith 
in  their  vision  of  a  living  and  present  Christ 
have  been  gazing  only  on  dreams,  then  a  por- 
tion, and  perhaps  a  main  portion,  of  all  this 
working  philosophy  of  the  pastorate  falls  to 
the  ground.  But  not  all  of  it  fails,  even  in  that 
case,  for  the  historical  basis  of  Christianity, 
whatever  it  is  held  to  be,  may  be  so  vividly 
realized  by  the  mind  as,  in  a  sense,  to  live  again 
and  forever;  and  thus  the  ideal  picture  of 
Christ's  life,  shining  through  whatever  im- 
perfections are  assumed  to  exist  in  the  Gospel 
record,  continues  to  maintain  an  inspiring  in- 
fluence upon  the  mind  similar  to  that  which 


THE  PASTORAL  SPIRIT  15 

such  a  Christ  Himself  would  exert  if  He  were 
still  alive. 

At  this  point,  then,  the  vista  of  our  whole 
theme  suddenly  opens  before  us  with  a  kind  of 
thrill  and  wonder,  and  we  imagine  that  we  can 
perhaps  state,  in  some  approximately  compact 
phrase,  the  proposition  which  is  our  thesis  now 
namely  that  the  genius  of  the  Christian  pastor- 
ate is  the  principle  of  the  humanly  fraternal 
developed  through  fellowship  with  the  Figure 
of  the  human  Jesus  and  carried  high  enough  to 
become  spiritually  mediatorial  through  God's 
grace  as  reflecting  and  articulating  the  Great 
Mediation  of  the  Divine  Christ. 

And  just  here  we  again  discover,  with  a 
curious  start  of  surprise  and  joy — that  as  the 
present  age  and  era  is  the  era  of  the  comrade, 
so  it  is  also,  and  with  equal  urgency,  the  era 
for  the  social  mediator.  The  time  cries  aloud, 
not  only  for  mediatorship  between  man  and 
God,  but  for  mediatorship  between  man  and 
man,  class  and  class,  nation  and  nation.  We 
may  perhaps  put  this  point  very  strongly  and 
assert  that  just  now,  in  the  midst  of  the  up- 
heaval and  dissolution  of  traditional  assump- 
tions, in  the  midst  of  perilous  and  glorious  dis- 
locations and  realignments  in   the   intellectual 


i6  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

and  social  world,  in  the  midst  of  fresh  and 
acute  shocks  between  opposing  classes,  even  in 
the  rise  and  sweeping  surge  of  a  socialistic 
propaganda,  half  mad,  half  prophetic,  is  dis- 
closed as  never  before,  both  a  peremptory  need 
of  and  a  passionate  outcry  for  precisely  this 
genuine  social  mediatorship. 

Oh!  for  a  battalion  of  ministers  who  shall 
go  forth  now  in  Christ's  name,  so  nobly  com- 
rades as  to  be  also  true  mediators  among  men. 
I  see  the  holy  and  beautiful  lips  of  the  Gal^ 
lilean  moving  again  as  of  old,  saying  "  Blessed 
are  the  peacemakers,"  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  mediators  of  the  new  age.  Chris- 
tian pastors  are  called  of  the  time  and  of 
God  to  be  such.  Nobody  else  can  be  such  so 
well. 

The  minister  must  be  a  mediator  now  or 
fail.  He  must  explain  men  to  themselves,  and 
to  one  another.  He  must  explain  man  to  man, 
class  to  class.  He  must  be  the  Hnk  of  fellow- 
ship between  what  else  would  fall  asunder. 

He  must  humanly  mediate  between  men,  in 
order  that  he  may  articulate  and  reincarnate 
the  spirit  of  his  Master's  mediation  between 
man  and  God. 

Here,    then,    in  vital   and   even   inevitable 


THE   PASTORAL   SPIRIT  17 

succession,  rise  before  us  the  main  terraces  of 
our  theme;  or  if  the  simile  of  steps  be  hack- 
neyed, let  -us  consider  these  divisions,  which 
will  be  taken  up  in  the  lectures  to  follow,  as 
several  rooms,  opening  upon  one  central 
rotunda,  which  we  may  denominate  the  Pas- 
toral Spirit. 

THE    PASTORAL   SPIRIT 

A  word,  therefore,  of  this  Pastoral  Spirit  as 
we  close  to-day. 

May  we  not  assert  that  each  of  the  great 
professions  possesses  its  own  peculiar  genius,  a 
sentiment  characteristic  of  it  alone,  and  in  a 
sense  non-transferable  ? 

Medicine  has  its  distinctive  enthusiasm;  the 
law  its  own.     So  of  journalism  or  art. 

Accordingly,  I  would  lay  a  double  initial 
emphasis  upon  the  truth  that  here,  in  this 
identification  of  our  specific  pastoral  spirit,  is 
the  very  crux  and  talisman  of  our  calling.  "  In 
hoc  signo  vincimus." 

And  yet  there  is  perhaps  some  reason  to 
fear  that  this  is  precisely  the  matter  to  the  im- 
portance of  which  we  are  least  alive,  and 
which  is  least  emphasized  in  many  excellent 
manuals  upon  the  pastoral  office. 

Last  summer,  in  the  wish  to  meet  a  little  less 


i8  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

meagrely  the  responsibility  of  this  lectureship, 
which  I  had  then  consented  to  assume,  I  spent 
several  weeks  in  Oxford,  at  work  in  the 
Bodleian  Library,  endeavoring  to  look  with 
some  care  through  the  numerous  volumes,  both 
by  the  more  recent  and  the  older  writers  on 
this  subject  of  the  Christian  Pastorate.  Two 
discoveries  surprised  me;  First,  the  compara- 
tively limited  amount,  as  well  as  literary  in- 
feriority, of  the  material  specially  relating  to 
the  pastoral  function,  as  compared  with  that 
devoted  to  preaching.  And  the  second,  and 
still  more  surprising  fact  was,  that  in  all  theses 
forty  or  fifty  volumes,  so  far  as  I  was  able  to 
examine  them,  almost  the  entire  weight  of  the 
discussion,  both  by  Anglicans  and  by  Non- 
conformists, seemed  to  be  thrown  upon  rather 
prolix  and  conventional  tabulations  and  de- 
scriptions of  the  objective  functions  of  parish 
duty,  while  comparatively  little  effort  had  been 
made,  apparently,  to  render  forth  anything 
like  a  vivid  and  thorough  conception  of  what 
the  pastoral  spirit  itself  really  is;  how  it  dif- 
fers from  other  enthusiasms  in  the  mind,  what 
constitutes  its  dynamic  secriet,  how  it  kindles 
and  masters  men,  and  how  a  minister  may  rec- 
ognize it,  and  employ  it,  as  he  would  drive 


THE  PASTORAL   SPIRIT  19 

some  splendid  high-bred  horse,  housed  in  his 
stall. 

Our  simple  series  of  talks  can  certainly 
enter  upon  no  ambitious  attempt  to  present  a 
complete  analysis  of  this  pastoral  spirit;  yet 
our  whole  effort  will  break  down  unless  we 
get  some  clear  impression  of  its  specific  psy- 
chological distinction,  its  curious  aliveness,  its 
gentlemanliness,  its  leap  and  glow,  its  Christ- 
like brooding  and  yearning,  its  subtlety  and 
vivacity  of  mental  impulse,  like  the  movement 
of  quick-silver. 

Perhaps  a  better  symbol  would  be  the  sparkle 
of  cold  water.  Indeed,  the  cup  of  pure  crystal 
water,  conceived  of  as  the  union,  strange 
to  say,  of  those  two  quick  and  imponderable 
spirits  of  flame,  oxygen  and  hydrogen,  one  de- 
noting the  heavens  and  the  other  the  earth,  is 
hardly  a  fantastic  similitude  of  that  indefina- 
ble vitality  and  vivacity  by  which  the  pastoral 
spirit  exhibits  its  integral  union  of  the  human 
comradeship  with  the  heavenly  mediation. 

But  is  this  so  ?  you  ask.  We  are  plain  mat- 
ter-of-fact men,  and  we  challenge  you.  Are 
you  not  simply  "  up  in  the  air,"  idealizing  our 
vocation  and  drawing  a  fancy  picture  of  a 
subjective  condition  which  a  mystic  here  and 


20  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

there  may  realize  perhaps,  but  which  is  not  a 
necessary  concomitant  of  most  men's  ministry? 

Well,  that  is  for  you  to  determine  as  our 
discussion  proceeds.  I  am  certainly  not  ad- 
vancing the  theory  of  any  abnormal  or  mys- 
tical or  extra-human  faculty  conferred  upon 
pastors;  but  I  do  hold  to  this  as  a  psycholog- 
ical fact,  capable  of  ample  verification,  that 
the  development  in  a  man  of  the  pastoral  spirit, 
— the  genius  of  comradeship,  carried  up  to  the 
level  of  spiritual  sponsorship  and  social  medi- 
ation, which  is  the  true  priesthood  in  Christ's 
name,  is  attended  by  the  release  into  action  and 
more  and  more  into  definite  consciousness  of  a 
certain  unique  enthusiasm,  which  is  under 
God,  the  force  upon  the  pastoral  side  of  our 
calling. 

And  yet  this  pastoral  spirit  rather  laughs 
at  any  attempt  to  analyze  it,  so  simple  is  it  and 
manly,  swiftly  moving  and  all  alive.  It  does 
not  like  to  sit  down  before  a  lecturier's  camera. 
Like  Dr.  Brown's  high-bred  Scotch  collie, 
"  Wylie,"  my  saint  and  hero  among  dogs,  it 
would  rather  be  away  on  the  moors  tending 
the  sheep.  But  if  we  can  catch  the  noble, 
eager,  tireless  creature,  and  hold  it  long 
enough  for  any  inspection,  we  shall  marvel  at 


THE  PASTORAL   SPIRIT  21 

the  quiver  of  its  life  and  thank  God  for  the 
privilege  of  making  it  our  own. 

Ah,  gentlemen,  I  check  myself  at  this  men- 
tion even  of  the  v^onderful  collie,  for  it  is  the 
shepherd  himself  whose  figure  emerges  in 
the  sweet  and  sonorous  Latin  word  entitling 
these  studies  of  ours,  who  is  our  most  perfect 
image  of  that  which  we  would  describe.  The 
"  Pastor  "  is  our  Lord's  own  image  of  Him- 
self and  of  His  minister, — a  symbol  repro- 
duced from  the  noblest  Old  Testament 
prophecy. 

The  Pastoral  spirit  is  the  Shepherd  spirit, 
reproducing  the  spirit  of  the  ''Chief  Shep- 
herd," as  St.  Peter  calls  our  Lord,  and  de- 
veloped in  the  minister  by  his  personal  fellow- 
ship with  that  Human-Divine  Personality. 
The  image  is  ideally  perfect.  Seen  dimly  in 
the  dawn  against  the  upland  horizon,  or  more 
clearly  beneath  the  blaze  of  noonday,  appear- 
ing in  all  song  and  story,  in  the  homeliest  as 
well  as  the  lordliest  literature  and  in  the  rural 
life  of  the  ages,  the  shepherd  offers  the  finest 
model  which  human  avocations  afford  of  per- 
sonal fidelity.  Tireless  watchfulness,  valiant 
protection,  tender  care,  sagacious,  indomitable 
devotion  unto  death,  are  all  combined  in  him 


22  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

"  who  giveth  his  life  for  the  sheep."  Not  the 
wolf  that  howls  in  the  night,  not  the  thunder 
of  raging  storm,  not  the  serpent  that  slides 
through  the  thick  grass,  not  hunger  or  thirst 
or  the  robber's  knife  can  separate  the  shepherd 
from  the  flock  he  loves. 

You  will  pardon  what  you  will  regard  as 
the  over-florid  emphasis  upon  these  similitudes. 
Yet  similitudes  even  such  as  these  are,  as  I 
understand  the  matter,  not  far-fetched,  as 
illustrating  that  specific  temper  which  we  dis- 
cover in  the  Christian  ministry.  It  is  both  an 
intuition  and  a  feeling,  realized  together  in 
one  indivisible  impulse,  in  whose  peculiar 
motive  and  particular  ierrand  appears  the 
blending  of  the  two  sentiments  already  indi- 
cated, that  of  red-blooded  human  brother- 
hood, and  that  of  religious  sponsorship,  fused 
in  the  thrilling  sense  of  a  special  diving  com- 
mission. 

But  a  little  more  in  detail.  In  any  attempt 
to  characterize  such  a  compound  mental  im- 
pulse, which  is  partly  disclosed  in  conscious- 
ness and  partly  not,  our  best  way,  as  I  sup- 
pose, is  to  describe  it  in  its  practical  action. 

I  shall,  therefore,  single  out  and  specify  five 
main  features  of  the  Pastoral  Spirit  in  action, 
by  which,  in  their  combination  and  interplay, 


THE  PASTORAL   SPIRIT  23 

this  spirit  of  the  Christian  Pastorate  is  known. 
iThey  are  these : 

The  chivalry  of  Christian  honor  for  men. 

The  tenderness  of  Christian  sympathy  with 
men. 

Thg  genius  of  rescue. 

The  passion  of  spiritual  sponsorship. 

The  cheer  of  the  invulnerable  Christian 
hope. 

These  features  of  the  Pastoral  Spirit  will 
come  up  for  successive  mention  in  the  lectures 
to  follow;  but  the  actual  work  of  our  calling 
itself  does  not  thus  segregate  and  disunite 
them.  They  are  all  realized  together,  as  one 
glowing  impulse,  pervading  the  pastor's  serv- 
ice in  each  of  the  four  great  roles  which  we 
are  to  consider,  and  which  are  these : 

First — The  Pastor  in  his  primary  relation 
as  Human  Comrade  and  Counsellor, 

Second—The  Pastor  in  his  supreme  office 
as  Christian  Sponsor  and  Social  Mediator  in 
Christ's  name. 

Third — The  Pastor,  so  developed,  launch- 
ing his  personality  upon  his  church  as  the 
Parish  Organiser  and  Leader. 

Fourth  and  finally— The  Pastor  in  his  pul- 
pit, as  Preacher  and  Public  Religious  Teacher. 


LECTURE  II 

THE   PASTOR   AS    COMRADE   AND 
COUNSELLOR 


THE    PASTOR    AS    COMRADE    AND 
COUNSELLOR 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  writing  in  June, 
1883,  to  his  friend  W.  E.  Henley,  concerning 
the  Hterary  art,  remarks : 

"  I  beg  to  inform  you  that  I,  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson,  author,  etc.,  am  merely  beginning 
to  commence  to  prepare  to  make  a  first  start 
at  trying  to  understand  my  profession." 

Behind  the  joke  is  an  ache.  The  whimsical- 
ity is  only  the  mask  for  a  kind  of  self-despair. 
Self-despair  is  the  word.  Said  one  of  you  to 
me  last  November,  "It  is  not  self-distrust  I 
feel,  it  is  self-despair;  but  I  won't  let  men 
know  it."  This  is  a  mood  which  often  falls 
upon  a  sensitive,  ingenuous  young  mind,  when 
alive  to  the  ideal  of  a  great  vocation.  A  gen- 
tleman does  not  parade  his  faint-heartedness 
although  he  feels  it  so  keenly.  He  masks  it 
under  a  quip  or  a  jest. 

No  man  feels  this  more  than    the    young 

minister;  no  man  save  one,  and  that  one  is  the 

old  minister,  because  this  sense  of  an  almost 

hopeless  discrepancy — ^half  whimsical,  it  is  so 

27 


28  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

absolute — between  the  loftiness  of  the  pastoral 
ideal  and  the  meagreness  of  onfe's  own  per- 
formance, increases  rather  than  lessens  as  life 
goes  on. 

Over  against  this  self-despair  comes  in, 
more  and  more  it  is  true,  another  feeling,  that 
of  trust  in  the  divine  help,  and  the  conviction 
also  that  God  often  employs  very  poor  tools 
at  very  fine  tasks ;  but  still  the  sense  of  incom- 
petency remains  so  keen  as  to  shut  off  all 
assumption,  and  I  cannot  say  a  truer  word  at 
the  outset  of  this  second  lecture-talk  than  to 
enter  a  demurrer  against  any  apprehension 
that  the  present  speaker  assumes  a  right  to  lay 
down  rules  for  your  practice  in  our  arduous 
but  fascinating  calling. 

You  are  to  be  yourselves.  We  have,  it  is 
true,  carried  the  legend  of  individuality  in 
pastoral  practice  so  far  as  almost  to  shut  out 
clinical  appositeness  from  lectureships  on  the 
pastoral  function.  And  this  is  a  pity,  for 
surely  the  cure  of  souls  involves  principles 
of  spiritual  therapeutics  as  definite  and  as 
verified  as  those  accepted  by  our  brethren  of 
the  medical  profession  in  their  healing  of 
men's  bodies. 

Still,  at  the  heart  of  it,  th'e  genius  of  our 


TASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR    29 

profession  is  preeminently  that  of  the  adap- 
tation of  individuality  to  individuality,  as  St. 
Paul  declares  in  a  famous  autobiographical 
passage!. 

The  pastoral  impulse,  when  fully  developed, 
is  subtle,  nimble,  lightly  moved.  It  is  a  con- 
stant passion  in  an  individual  man  for  per- 
sonal religious  ministry.  It  adopts,  therefore, 
spontaneously,  many  varying  types  of  endow- 
ment as  its  agents,  and  many  methods  of 
address  as  its  channels. 

In  these  talks  I  bring  to  you  only  a  few 
hints  from  one  man's  work.  They  are 
sprinkled — let  us  suppose — with  one  man's 
heart's  blood,  and  are  for  him — let  us  admit — 
the  best  working  rules  he  has.  But  still  sift 
them,  gentlemen,  eliminate  the  personal  equa- 
tion from  them.  Pardon  any  chance  note  as 
of  dogmatism. 

I  seem  to  myself  hardly  more  than  a  novice: 
still.  Challenge,  therefore,  everything  I  say. 
Test  it  by  the  Scriptures  and  by  the  witness 
of  other  men.  Fear  not  to  trust  your  own 
judgment  in  correcting  it.  If  you  find  any 
fragment  which  may  serve  your  turn,  remodel 
it,  so  as  to  make  it  fit  better  upon  your  own 
individual  errands. 


30  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

Our  special  topic  to-day  is : 

The  Pastor  as  a  Human  Comrade  and 
Counsellor, 

[What  is  this  comradeship? 

How  is  it  developed  in  the  Pastor? 

[What  is  the  demand  for  it,  especially  at  the 
present  time? 

These  are  the  questions  which  suggest  the 
simple  divisions  we  may  follow. 

First.  As  to  the  first  question  you  are  bear- 
ing in  mind  the  boldness  of  our  thesis. — Our 
key  note  in  these  lectures  is  to  the  effect  that 
the  pastoral  spirit — ^the  pastoral  soul — is,  as 
we  conceive  it,  the  result  of  the  humanly  fra- 
ternal carried  so  high  through  fellowship  with 
Christ  as  to  become  the  spiritually  mediatorial 
in  His  Name.  You  will,  therefore,  have  been 
asking — What  sort  of  comradeship — what 
style  of  brotherhood  must  this  be  which  can 
bear  the  weight  of  such  a  tremendous  sequel? 

We  are  to  trace  the  rise  and  development 
in  the  minister's  mind,  under  psychological 
law  of  a  very  unique  and  wonderful  temper, 
and  the  question  is  peremptory  whether  in 
fixing  upon  a  basic  mental  impulse  so  plain 
and  simple  as  human  brotherhood  we  are  pro- 
viding adequate  foundation  for  a  structure  so 
lofty. 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   31 

And  yet  that  is  precisely  what  we  do.    We 
take  this  plain,  human  sentiment,  and  no  other, 
as  our  psychological  starting  point.     We   can 
in  reason  take  no  other.     Why  seek  for  any 
broader  foundation  than  love  in  building  up 
the  Christian  Pastorate?    Love  "never  fail- 
eth  "  while  "  tongues  "  may  fail.    On  that  floor 
you  stand  brother  to  every  man  on  earth,  and 
whatever  edifice  of  sacramental  ministry  be 
built  up  upon  the  "  Great  Bases  "  of  unselfish 
love  shall  stand  fair  and  sure  forever.     This 
human  fellow  feeling  is  indeed,  as  we  shall 
see,  taken  up  into  the  realm  of  Christian  faith, 
and  becomes  irradiated  with  the  light  and  life 
of  Jesus  Christ,  but  yet  essentially  and  rad- 
ically it  is  in  itself  natural  and  human,  with  no 
esoteric  refinements  or  supranatural  additions. 
The  Pastor,  indeed,  need  not  cultivate  the 
extreme  of  boisterous    bonhomie    satirized  by 
Cowper : 

"  The  man  that  hails  you  Tom  or  Jack, 
And  proves  by  thumping  on  your  back 
His  sense  of  your  great  merit 
Is  such  a  friend,  that  one  had  need 
Be  very  much  his  friend  indeed 
To  pardon  or  to  bear  it." 

This  "hail  fellow"  style  is  not  necessary, 
and  yet  what  we  have  in  mind  in  Pastoral 


32  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

Comradeship  is  after  all  at  bottom  plain 
Brotherliness,  of  the  "  out  and  out,"  practical, 
red-blooded  kind, — this,  however,  made  Chris- 
tian and  surcharged  after  the  manner  of  Jesus, 
with  democratic  and  spiritual,  fire.  It  is  friend- 
ship raised  to  the  point  of  spiritual  incan- 
descence, but  also  especially  grounded  in 
honor — honor  for  the  human  creature.  . 

HONOR   FOR    HUMANITY 

Indeed,  the  word  comrade,  etymologically- 
speaking  as  well  as  in  the  light  of  current 
usage,  carries  with  it  a  note  a  little  more 
deeply  respectful  as  well  as  vividly  vital  even 
than  the  word  friend.  It  is  friendship, — - 
then  one  hand- turn  more. 

A  friend  may  look  a  little  down  on  you.  A 
comrade's  glance  is  level.  A  friend  comes  to 
aid  you.  A  comrade  stays  with  you.  A 
friend  counts  you  in  with  him.  A  comrade 
counts  himself  in  with  you.  A  friend  can 
wait  till  to-morrow  about  helping  you,  and  yet 
be  comfortable.  The  word  of  comradeship 
is  now.  Friendship  affiliates.  Comradeship 
identifies.  Friendship  talks  across.  Com- 
radeship walks  abreast.  There  is  no  essential 
difference  between  the  two;  but  comradeship 


PASTOR  "AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   33 

keeps  one  stick  more  in  the  furnace.  Friend- 
ship is  not  cool;  but  comradeship  is  blaz- 
ing flame.  Comradeship  to-day  is  friendship 
raised  to  the  highest  power — the  fusion  of 
man  with  man  in  God's  great  blast-furnace  of 
the  modern  time. 

And  because  in  our  new  social  era,  the  word 
of  fellowship  among  the  rank  and  file  of  men 
is  comrade,  therefore,  the  kind  of  Pastor 
wanted  and  needed  among  men  is  the  kind  of 
Pastor  who  makes  that  name  good. 

'Honor  for  humanity,  as  well  as  fellowship 
with  humanity,  is  thus  the  ground-tone  in 
that  comradeship  of  which  we  are  now  speak- 
ing as  being  the  primary  germ  in  the  pastoral 
evolution.  It  is  the  first  of  what  we  termed 
the  five  essential  features  of  the  Pastoral 
Spirit. 

Honor  for  humanity  is  a  familiar  phrase 
to-day,  although  for  generations  it  was 
tabooed  as  being  inconsistent  with  orthodox 
views  of  human  depravity.  And,  possibly, 
you  may  lift  a  cautious  hand  and  tell  me  to 
choose  my  words  narrowly  at  this  volcanic 
point.  Not  so,  gentlemen!  Why  should  I 
mince  the  matter?  I  am  here  to  attest,  so  far 
as  I  rationally  and  scripturally  can,  what  I 


34  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

believe  you  believe  and  have  a  right  to  be- 
lieve, and  I  am  sure  you  are  right  in  your  con- 
viction that  a  "mystery  of  iniquity"  in  hu- 
man nature  is  not  the  "  total  depravity "  of 
human  nature. 

A  sincere  but  provincial  interpretation  of 
that  phrase,  "total  depravity,"  threw  its  dark 
pall  too  long  across  the  New  England  Hills; 
so  that  one  hardly  wonders  when,  a  century 
ago,  the  father  of  Horace  Bushnell,  coming 
out  of  the  Episcopal  church  into  the  Congrega- 
tional, in  New  Preston,  Conn.,  complains  of 
what  he  calls  the  '^rather  over-total  depravity 
of  the  Sermon!" 

But  this  interpretation  of  the  word  total 
is  no  part  of  an  irenic  orthodoxy.  In  true 
Christianity,  pity  starts  with  honor,  and  the 
impulse  to  save  springs  aloft  out  of  the  sense 
of  radical  worth  in  the  thing  to  be  saved. 

The  prodigal  son  was  his  father's  child. 
He  was  not  a  whelp  of  the  desert,  a  pariah  of 
perdition.  With  whatever  sense  of  the  name- 
less horror  and  woe  of  that  infernal  irration- 
ality which  wg  call  moral  evil,  the  true  Pastor 
carries  at  the  bottom  of  his  manhood  the 
chivalry  of  honor  for  that  which  he  is  trying 
to  serve.     This  is  both  a  conviction  and  a 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR    35 

sentiment,  having  its  ethical  foundation  in  the 
dual  doctrine  of  the  spiritual  Fatherhood  of 
God  and  sonship  of  man,  and  its  scientific 
corroboration  in  the  modern  testimony  con- 
cerning the  countless  and  strenuous  ages 
through  which,  under  evolutional  law,  this 
wonderful  human  creation,  the  crown  of 
nature,  as  well  as  its  paradox  and  problem, 
has  been  slowly  brought  to  its  present  stage. 

Out  of  this  conviction  concerning  man,  at 
once  spiritual  and  scientific,  springs  a  senti- 
ment which  is  a  veritable  knighthood  of  the 
ministry,  a  noblesse  oblige  which  takes  its 
cap  off,  not  only  in  the  presence  of  women, 
but  of  humanity  everywhere. 

This  spirit  is  not  merely  courtesy.  It  is 
elemental  equity.  Its  gracious  but  tremen- 
dous logic  springs  straight  from  the  funda- 
mental truths  of  man  and  revelation. 

If  the  universe  is  old,  then  is  humanity 
great. 

If  God  be  parental,  then  is  humanity  great. 

If  Christ  be  Mary's  Son,  then  is  humanity 
great. 

If  Calvary  be  worth  while,  then  is  humanity 
great. 

The  intensest  conviction  of  human  sin  is  the 


36  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

reflex  of  the  sense  of  the  greatness  of  that 
upon  which  the  sin  has  fallen.  Pity  and  honor 
always  dwell  together  in  the  pastoral  soul. 

The  late  Dr.  R.  W.  Dale  of  Birmingham, 
whose  "  Nine  Lectures  on  Preaching,"  deliv- 
ered thirty  years  ago  in  Yale  Divinity  School, 
still  remain  nearly  or  quite  at  the  head  of 
modern  manuals  upon  the  homiletical  side  of 
our  work,  quotes  George  Eliot  to  illustrate  the 
difference  in  mental  attitude  between  two 
sorts  of  ministers — Mrs.  Poyster  in  "Adam 
Bede',"  speaking  of  the  two  parsons  of  Hay- 
slope,  remarks — "  Mr.  Irwine  was  like  a  good 
meal  o'victual,  you  were  the  better  for  him 
without  thinking  on  it;  and  Mr.  Ryde  was 
like  a  dose  o'  physic,  he  gripped  you  and  he 
worreted  you,  and  after  all  he  left  you  much 
the  same." 

"Mr.  Ryde"  represents  the  "judicial," 
fault-finding,  condemnatory  attitude  toward 
humanity;  and  it  is  false  and  bad.  On  the 
contrary,  the  true  Pastor  sounds  as  his  key- 
note Sir  Thomas  Browne's  sentiment,  "Na- 
ture is  the  art  of  God."  Human  nature 
is,  therefore,  looked  upon  as  the  highest 
of  that  art.  Nor  does  any  sense,  however 
poignant,  of  human  misery  and  error,  or  even 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR    37 

of  the  black  depths  of  that  iniquity  in  which 
humanity  is  engulfed,  neutralize  the  Pastor's 
underlying  reverence  for  the  human  creature* 

Indeed,  this  sense  of  honor  for  humanity 
is  so  constant  that  it  will  not  be  denied,  and 
is  not  discouraged,  even  in  front  of  the  poorest 
specimens  of  men,  but  searches  steadfastly 
in  the  poor,  coarsened,  peasant  face,  eager  to 
catch,  and  believing  that  it  will  catch  there, 
"  some  glint  i'  th'  een,"  as  the  Scotch  say^ 
some  dash  of  sunlight  upon  cheek  and  brow, 
which,  to  recall  our  Wordsworth,  shall  con- 
vey the  true  hint  of  "  that  imperial  palace 
whence  we  came." 

You  observe  that  what  I  am  speaking  of  is 
not  the  dutifully  conventional  and  often  mourn- 
fully pious  assertion  of  the  "  value  of  the 
human  soul,"  in  quotation  marks.  It  is  the 
actual  sense  of  the  innate  and  inalienable 
beauty  of  human  personality,  body  and  soul 
together,  and  without  any  quotation  marks  at 
all.  It  is  a  kind  of  shock  and  quiver  of  manly 
joy  at  the  sight  of  a  human  face,  like  that  of 
the  botanist  finding  a  rare  flower  on  a  high 
Alp.  The  pastoral  impulse  is  not  merely  to 
save,  but  to  honor  humanity  so  much  that  sav- 
ing seems  inevitably  worth  while, 


38  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

Naturally  also  this  pastoral  sense  of  the 
greatness  of  human  life  is  quite  irrespective 
of  all  accidents  of  culture  or  station.  It  is 
a  note  of  manners  and  mental  attitude  which 
never  leaves  the  true  Pastor,  but  clothes  him 
like  a  garment,  and  walks  with  him  down  the 
street,  pervading  the  most  casual  interview, 
not  laboriously,  as  if  with  "  deliberate  premedi- 
tation aforethought," — ^to  parody  a  judicial 
phrase — and  never  with  any  slightest  touch  of 
mawkish  pose,  either  explicit  or  implicit,  any 
more  than  you  say  "  Dear  Madam  "  to  your 
mother. 

The  labored  mawkishness  of  pastoral  man- 
ner sometimes  seen  is  the  counterfeit  of  the 
thing  we  are  speaking  of,  a  clever  counterfeit 
perhaps,  enough  to  deceive  the  very  elect;  but 
a  counterfeit  for  all  that. 

The  true  article  is  not  over-serious.  It  is 
own  cousin  to  humor  and  laughter.  Our 
seriousness  is  often  two-thirds  vanity  and 
spiritual  pride. 

The  true  honor  for  men  appears  in  a  certain 
careful  and  genial  considerateness  as  to  the 
mood  and  the  need  of  the  man  you  meet, 
an  instinctive  and  delicate  scrupulousness  in 
"  taking  the  man  fair,"  as  we  say,  a  habit  of 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   39 

seeing  him  against  his  own  horizon  as  well  as 
yours,  yet  giving  him  the  benefit  of  the  divine 
landscape  which  you  think  you  see,  a  certain 
assumption  of  the  high-bred  as  existing  of 
necessity  in  th(g  very  understructure  of  his 
soul. 

A  Christian  minister  ought  to  be  able  even 
to  walk  down  the  white  clanking  corridor  of 
the  State's  prison  bearing  to  the  wrecked  and 
wretched  congregation  assembled  there  to  meet 
him,  an  honor  for  "  the  man  within  the  man  " 
still  eloquent  in  his  eye. 

In  a  word,  the  pastoral  spirit  is  stamped 
upon  its  very  front  with  a  dignity  of  fellow- 
ship with  humanity  which  does  not  willingly 
leave  upon  even  the  briefest  interview  a  mem- 
ory which  lowers  the  tone  of  life. 

COMRADESHIP,  HOW    ATTAINED 

Second.  But  how  shall  the  reality  of  this 
high  comradeship  be  attained  ?  By  what  method 
shall  the  young  Pastor  develop  within  himself 
this  spirit  of  lofty  fellowship  with  men .?  Here 
we  reach  the  heart  of  the  inquiry  before  us  to- 
day, and  here  we  get  the  best  light  upon  the 
nature  of  pastoral  comradeship  itself. 

I   answer   the   question   by  insisting   at  the 


40  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

very  start  that  we  must  accustom  ourselves  to 
a  more  natural  way  of  regarding  people,  in- 
stead of  the  perfunctory,  professional  way.  We 
must,  I  imagine,  go  back  to  the  very  beginning 
of  the  young  preacher's  ministry,  and  clear 
away  an  assumption  of  callow  officialism  which 
too  often  clogs  his  footsteps  even  at  the  gateway 
of  his  calling. 

It  is  one  of  those  unfortunate  legacies  of 
mediaeval  tradition,  which  are  all  the  more 
persistent  and  baneful  because  hidden  and  un- 
noticed, that  the  young  Pastor  so  often  enters 
the  arena  of  his  profession  by  the  wrong  door, 
i,  e.,  from  the  side  of  ministerial  formalism 
rather  than  the  side  of  human  fraternaUsm.  He 
tries  to  begin  where  he  ought  to  leave  off. 

The  gentlem<en  of  the  Faculty  will  forgive 
me  if  I  avow  a  fear  that  the  curriculum  of  our 
Theological  Institutions,  alive  as  our  profes- 
sors are  increasingly  to  the  practical  needs  of 
men,  is  not,  even  yet,  quite  so  far  recon- 
structed as  to  set  the  young  theologue  into 
his  work  through  the  gate  of  human  fellow- 
ship rather  than  the  gate  of  clerical  assump- 
tion. 

For  nothing  is  clearer  in  the  study  of  the 
Gospels  than  the  fact  that  the  psychological 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   41 

development  which  issues  at  last  in  what  is 
most  nobly  ministerial  and  mediatorial  in  our 
profession  begins  in  simple  Christlike  brother- 
liness. 

Pentecost  is  to  be  reached  via  Emmaus  and 
the  walk  thither.  First  Gennesaret,  then  Cal- 
vary. "That  is  not  first  which  is  Spiritual, 
but  that  which  is  natural,  then  that  which  is 
spiritual."  As  opposed  to  this,  is  it  not  true 
that  we  have  been  apt  to  start  in  our  ministry, 
assuming  to  be  little  spokesmen  for  the  Eter- 
nal, and  thus,  all  unaware  to  ourselves,  stiffen 
at  the  outset  into  an  odd  and  more  or  less  con- 
ceited religious  exclusiveness,  only  to  spend 
the  latter  half  of  life  in  trying,  with  difficulty, 
to  climb  down  to  where  people  really  are? 
That  is  both  an  awkward  and  a  pathetic  piece 
of  gymnastics.  We  have  to  learn,  sooner  or 
later,  what  Jane  Addams  of  Hull  House  aptly 
calls  "  the  futility  of  the  individual  conscience." 

I  put  the  point  extravagantly,  in  order  that 
you  may  omit  the  extravagance  and  put  it 
truly;  but  the  point  itself  is  worth  thinking 
about. 

We  shall  maintain  that  the  normal  evolu- 
tion of  Christ's  minister  as  a  Pastor  to-day  is 
like  that  of  the  disciples  of  old,  from  wayside 


5|2  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

companionship  to  apostolic  prerogative,  not 
the  reverse.  We  reassert  our  main  proposition 
that  the  fraternal  sentiment  in  the  pastorate, 
if  genuine  and  carried  high  so  as  to  be 
Christ-like,  develops  into  the  mediatorial ;  and 
we  must  disown  the  topsy-turvy  psychology, 
which,  unfortunately  for  the  credit  and  power 
of  our  calling,  has  been  allowed  to  reverse 
this  natural  order.  Dr.  Bonar  after  listening 
to  a  minister  who  was  preaching  with  great 
gusto  said  to  him,  "  You  love  to  preach,  don't 
you?"  "Yes,  indeed  I  do."  "But,"  said 
Bonar,  "  do  you  love  the  men  to  whom  you 
preach  ?  " 

To  carry  the  criticism  a  little  further,  one 
may  discover  reasons  enough  why  we  fall  into 
this  mistake.  That  deep  and  altogether  sacred 
experience  in  the  heart  of  a  young  man,  which 
he  interprets  as  a  "  call "  to  the  ministry,  may 
seem  to  him  at  first  to  segregate  him  some- 
what from  his  fellows. 

Then  too,  more  and  more,  the  pressure  of 
his  special  and  non-secular  studies  tends  to 
side-track  him  a  little,  unless  he  is  on  his 
guard.  Add  to  this  the  amiable  coddling 
of  the  devoted  group  of  his  well-meaning  and 
admiring  personal  friends  who  so  often  keep 
a  little,  low  fire  of  incense  burning,  beautiful 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   43 

and  blinding,  identifying"  the  young  minister 
with  something  separate  and  saintly,  the 
acolyte  of  a  vocation  supposed  to  be  set  apart 
of  God.  The  young  pastor  is  also  se- 
cluded from  many  average  temptations;  is 
treated  with  more  than  the  average  consider- 
ation ;  moves  in  a  social  environment  in  which 
sentiment  takes  the  place  of  the  rough  and 
tumble  which  the  young  man  training  for  a 
business  career  is  apt  to  receive.  Says  Galton 
in  his  work  on  "  Hereditary  Genius,"  "  A 
gently  complaining  and  fatigued  spirit  is  that 
in  which  Evangelical  Divines  are  apt  to  spend 
their  days." 

It  is  easy,  therefore, — it  is  almost  unavoid- 
able, that  before  he  is  quite  awake  to  the  dan- 
ger, a  certain  subtle  perfunctoriness  will  have 
spun  its  gray  yarn  over  the  young  theologue's 
mind.  He  takes  himself  very  seriously.  Well, 
he  ought,  and  yet,  and  yet ,  it  is  quite  possible 
that  he  will  have  to  spend  hard,  sad  years  later 
on  in  edging  back  and  down  to  the  plain,  sane, 
human  ground-floor  and  in  getting  this  incense 
out  of  his  eyes. 

"  But,  beloved,  we  are  persuaded  better  things 
of  you,  though  we  thus  speak." 

You  will  even  now  in  these  student  years 
and  from  now  resolutely  on,  hold  yourself  to 


44  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

the  basal  note  and  tone  of  simple,  humarr 
friendliness,  as  the  starting  point  for  every- 
thing else  in  your  profession.  You  will  ab- 
jure fustian  and  make  yourself  meet  men  on 
the  level  and  on  the  square ;  availing  yourself, 
deliberately  and  gladly,  of  all  influences  from 
nature,  from  literature,  from  current  life 
which  make  you  one  with  your  fellows. 

But  further  and  more  especially,  the  spirit 
of  comradeship  with  men  is  developed  in  the 
Pastor's  mind  chiefly  by  forming  and  main- 
taining the  habit  of  mental  companionship 
with  the  figure  of  the  human  Jesus,  as  set 
forth  in  our  Gospels.  Here  is  truly  the  live 
nerve  of  the  whole  matter.  For  Jesus  first 
introduced  and  embodied  to  the  world  the 
thought  of  human  comradeship.  He  discov- 
ered the  cosmopolitan  fraternity.  He  first 
taught  the  unhorizoned  hospitality. 

Our  proposition  that  the  true  and  normal 
initial  attitude  of  the  pastoral  mind  is  the 
fraternal,  bases  itself  primarily  and  chiefly 
upon  the  careful  study  of  the  New  Testament 
record  of  the  method  by  which  the  disciples 
were  developed  into  apostles  under  the  tute- 
lage of  Jesus  Christ,  both  before  and  after  the 
Resurrection. 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   45 

He  is,  indeed,  no  longer  living-  in  material 
form  before  us,  but  it  is  a  part  of  that  irenic 
Christian  faith,  which  these  lectures  assume, 
and  do  not  seek  to  argue,  to  believe  that  the 
inspired  Gospel  records  of  Jesus'  life  furnish 
the  channel  through  which  He  Himself  in 
propria  persona  and  in  living  power  still  com- 
munes with  men  and  impresses  His  personal- 
ity upon  our  minds,  even  as  He  did  upon  His 
immediate  disciples  of  old. 

A  study  of  the  effect  upon  them  of  their 
companionship  with  the  Master  is,  therefore, 
applicable  to  ourselves  in  our  mental  compan- 
ionship with  Him  through  the  medium  of  our 
use  of  the  Gospel  annals. 

These  plain  men  were  at  first  adherents, 
then  followers,  then  comrades  of  the  Beauti- 
ful Galilean,  "  walking  with  Him  in  the  way,'' 
and  so  along  that  same  "way"  they  became 
"disciples"  and  "apostles."  The  earliest 
germ  of  what  was  to  be  apostolic  in  their 
minds  and  in  some  true  sense  mediatorial  in 
their  service  was  in  the  pulse-beat  of  plain 
brotherhood,  into  which  they  entered  with 
Jesus  as  their  Friend  and  Teacher  and 
Leader. 

If  there  were  time,  one  would  love  to  try 


46  THE    CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

to  sketch  that  wonderful  Syrian  idyl,  how 
"  friendship  grew  from  more  to  more  " — to 
readapt  Tennyson's  delicate  phrase — as  that 
little  band  of  men  trudged  to  and  fro  in  Pales- 
tine, along  the  curving,  crowded  shore  of 
Gennesaret,  across  the  flower-strewn  plain  of 
Esdraelon,  over  the  rugged  uplands  of  Judea, 
for  those  three  swift,  gentle  years,  sailing  in 
a  boat  together,  camping  together  at  night, 
and  resting  side  by  side  at  noonday  in  some 
green  outlooking  glade  of  the  hills.  The  tone 
was  that  of  a  steadily  deepening  human  fellow- 
ship with  Jesus.  They  heard  the  Galilean  in- 
tonation. They  saw  the  evenly  parted  flow- 
ing hair.  They  gazed  into  His  face.  They 
became  familiar  with  the  mild,  strong  brow, 
the  ineffable  lit  look,  the  comrade-compelling 
eyes.  They  became  one  with  Him,  with  the 
body  and  soul  of  Him ;  so  that  it  had  become 
natural  at  last  for  St.  John  to  lay  his  older 
head  upon  the  bosom  of  his  young  Master. 

But  this  familiarity  did  not  breed  satiety, 
least  of  all  disrespect.  The  better  they  came 
to  know  Him,  the  more  they  came  to  love 
Him;  then  love  whitened  into  reverence,  and 
reverence  hushed  itself  in  a  kind  of  wondering 
homage  and  blessed  trust,  until  the  mental  soil 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   47 

had  become  mellowed  and  sifted  and  prepared 
for  the  thrilling  enlargements  of  faith  and  con- 
secration which  followed  the  Resurrection,  in 
which  they  took  up  their  Master's  mediatorial 
commission  in  His  name. 

But  this  process  of  mental  development  was 
from  the  beginning  in  accordance  with  nor- 
mal psychological  law,  proceeding  from  the 
palpable  to  the  ineffable,  from  human  contact 
to  spiritual  ascendency. 

Indeed,  as  I  have  re-read  the  Gospels  and 
the  Book  of  the  Acts  carefully  through  in  con- 
nection with  these  simple  lectures,  I  have 
failed  to  discover  any  line  as  of  demarcation, 
any  incident,  any  moment,  any  act  of  the 
Lord  at  which  and  by  which  the  man  was,  all 
at  once  and  by  enactment,  made  over  into 
an  apostle.  He  develops  into  the  apostle,  I 
do  not  say  by  his  own  power  and  law  of 
growth  alone.  I  do  not  mean  that  without 
the  co-operation  of  the  gift  of  the  Lord  he  at- 
tains the  apostolic  grace. 

I  mean  that  Christ's  spirit  worked  with  their 
spirits  through  perfectly  natural,  human  chan- 
nels, and  not  by  the  invocation  of  any  extra- 
natural  mental  law.  No  one  of  the  disciples 
ceased  to  be  himself.     His  training  was  the 


48  THE    CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

training  of  a  human  companion.  Togethef 
with  his  Master,  he  was  occupied  most  of  the 
time  in  rendering  simple  immediate  services 
to  sick  and  needy  people.  The  environment 
was  human.  The  relations  throughout  were 
common  and  natural.  The  culture  was  that 
of  plain  friendliness. 

In  a  word,  the  initial  training  of  these  men 
for  their  subsequent  pastoral  office  was 
through  intensifying  and  consecrating  the 
fraternal 

So  to-day.  In  the  mental  habit  of  inces- 
santly communing  with  the  Figure  of  Jesus, 
as  presented  in  the  Gospels,  human  though 
ineffable,  the  minister  comes  in  sight  of  the 
ultimate  meaning  of  comradeship  with  all 
men,  and  so  begins  to  apprehend  a  little  of 
what  the  wonderful  rhythm  of  Christ's  Divine 
Style  of  living  was,  and  thus  enters  what  is  al- 
most a  new  consciousness  as  to  the  vital  reach 
and  wealth  of  our  religion  and  the  beauty  of 
the  fellow-life  it  may  bring. 

I  am^  persuaded  that  here  Is  a  field  of  per- 
sonal experience  in  the  Pastorate,  the  subtle 
vitality  and  charm  of  which  we  have  not  fully 
realized.  Many  of  us  older  men  have  to  la- 
ment our  early  failure  in  this  direction,  be- 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR    49 

cause  our  natural  approach  to  the  Nazarene 
was  checked  by  the  presence  of  a  vague  and 
oppressive  theological  preconception. 

I  have  not  time  to  enter  into  this  fully  now ; 
but  it  seems  to  me  as  though  God  by  His 
Spirit  had  taken  certain  traditional  scales  off 
the  eyes  of  you  young  men  of  the  present  age, 
so  that  you  could  enter  into  a  new,  vivid,  sense 
of  human  companionship,  even  with  the  in- 
comparable Personality  of  the  Son  of  Mary. 

A  profound  change  is  coming  over  the  face 
of  the  waters.  One  meets  it  among  the  ablest 
and  most  earnest  younger  scholars  and  Chris- 
tian workers  everywhere.  Its  note  is,  in  a 
word,  this:  Realise  Christ  as  the  -first  dis- 
ciples did,  and  get  together  in  Him. 

It  is  a  new  keynote  in  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness of  the  time,  and  one  of  the  most 
pregnant  significance. 

OBJECTIVE   DEMAND 

Third.  We  come  then  to  the  question  as  to 
the  present  objective  demand  for  this  spirit  of 
comradeship  in  the  Pastor. 

I  would  not  ask  you  to  delay  at  this  point  if 
I  wished  only  to  recite  the  familiar  common- 
places concerning  the  universal  desire  of  men  for 
blood-warm  human  sympathy  in  their  minister. 


so  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

You  are  hearing  this  every  day.  It  has  always 
been  true,  and  always  will  be  true,  that  "  a  min- 
ister must  be  first  a  man,"  that  a  parish  made 
up  of  homes  desires  in  its  pastor  a  home-friend ; 
but  what  I  do  ask  you  to  notice  is  that  this  old 
parish  cry  for  brotherly  manhood  first,  as  the 
prerequisite  of  priesthood,  is  sharpened  into  a 
fresh  acuteness  of  accent  as  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury gets  fairly  under  way.  Go  abroad  among 
men  and  what  do  we  see  ?  New  forms  of  social 
organization.  Go  into  the  Colleges  and  what 
do  we  find  ?     New  chairs  of  social  economics. 

Within  less  than  twenty  years  a  new  science 
has  been  bom,  the  science  of  Sociology.  I 
might  almost  say  that  a  new  social  conscious-* 
ness  has  also  been  born.  Socialism,  which  is 
beyond  question  the  most  dynamic  word  and 
movement  of  the  hour,  a  movement  which  is 
a  melee  of  true  and  false,  of  right  and  wrong, 
a  movement  half-wild  and  mad  and  big  with 
peril,  yet  not  without  signals  of  noble  promise, 
is  at  bottom  not  a  novel  social  philosophy,  not 
a  new  economic  scheme.  At  bottom  it  is  a  new 
note  as  to  what  is  dreamed  of  as  possible  in 
human  fellowship.  John  Spargo  must  be 
reckoned  with  as  well  as  John  Calvin.  We 
are  entering  upon  the  era  of  the  world-wide 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   51 

fellowship.  An  average  American  Parish, — > 
especially  a  New  England  manufacturing 
town,  to  say  nothing  of  our  great  cities,  is  a 
parochial  polyglot.  You  will  have  to  learn 
brotherhood  in  ten  dialects.  At  first  a  certain 
academic  fastidiousness  in  the  student  may 
shrink  away  from  this  pastoral  democracy. 
Do  not  shrink.     Shrinking  is  shirking. 

Socialism,  in  its  usual  overt  surface  propa- 
ganda, is  an  illusion  and  a  suicide.  Its  logic 
would  sacrifice  both  freedom  and  faith,  and 
ultimately  ruin  both  the  home  and  the  state. 
It  does  not  know  what  to  do  with  either 
genius  or  sin  or  death  or  Christ  and  is  a 
grave  digger  rather  than  an  emancipator  of 
the  people. 

But  socialism,  in  the  sense  of  that  human 
ache  and  longing  which  lie  in  its  depths  like 
a  broken  rose  in  a  boiling  cauldron,  is  a  "  bit- 
ter cry  "  for  Christianity  itself  under  terms  of 
comradeship,  and  the  pastor  for  to-day  must 
know  that  bitter  cry  and  be  alive  to  it,  and 
be  able  to  say  in  response  to  it :  In  the  Great 
Comrade's  Name,  I  am  here. 

All  men  always  want  friendliness  in  what 
stands  for  the  Highest. 

One  of  your  own  number  uttered  to  me  a 


52  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

sentence  which  I  have  been  remembering  ever 
since  and  which  voices  us  all.  I  quote  ver- 
batim.    He  said: 

"We  fellows  take  in  here  a  lot  of  knowl- 
edge; but  it  is  and  must  be  mainly  theoretic. 
How  can  we  take  it  up,  work  it  over,  and  then 
give  it  out  so  that"  (mark  thiese  words:  they 
are  the  very  words  of  the  student  to  me) — 
"  so  that  plain  people  will  understand  by  what 
we  say  the  thing  we  mean  when  we  say 
it?" 

Ah,  that  is  the  question  indeed!  It  cuts 
right  down  on  living  nerve.  Now,  what  I 
suggest  in  answer  is  this,  for  substance, — ^that 
all  merely  intellectual  effort  to  accomplish  this 
translation  of  the  subjective  into  the  objective 
will  fail. 

Th'e  bridge  of  interpretation  between  your 
mind  and  the  mind  of  Jones  the  blacksmith,  or 
Johnson  the  carpenter,  must  be  brotherhood; 
— Christ's  sort  of  brotherhood — not  the  mere 
intellectual  conception  of  brotherhood  (crit- 
ics and  gossips  may  have  that  when  they  stab 
their  neighbors),  but  brotherhood  itself, 
friendship  incandescent,  a  pulse-beat,  a  fellow- 
ship-fountain as  genuine  and  spontaneous  as  a 
spring  shot  out  from  the  granite  ledges  of  old 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   53 

Katahdin  yonder  (which  I  once  cHmbed  on 
my  way  to  the  ministry). 

Such  human  fellowship  is  as  fraternal  and 
realistic  as  Bethany  itself.  Jesus  was  the  Di- 
yine  Realist  in  such  friendship. 

If  you  do  not  feel  it  in  your  heart  to  be  such 
a  kind  of  comrade  with  men  as  this,  then  ask 
the  Lord  for  a  knock-down  blow,  which  will 
give  you  the  sense  of  need  for  that  which  all 
through  your  ministry,  people  will  be  wanting 
from  you  every  week  of  every  year.  Possibly 
in  answer  to  prayer,  God  will  give  you  some 
vision  or  love  or  trial  even  which  will  melt 
you  and  recast  you  into  the  embodiment  of  a 
live  fraternalism,  such  as  you  would  have 
gained  by  beating  about  in  Palestine  for  three 
years  with  Jesus,  for  this  is  the  sine  qua  non 
of  a  really  effective  Christian  pastorate  to-day. 

And,  further,  it  is  out  of  such  a  Christ-trained 
comradeship  that  the  adequate  and  welcome 
pastoral  Counsellor  is  evolved. 

THE    COMRADE-COUNSELLOR 

And  this,  too,  is  a  necessity,  for  a  pastor 
must  be  a  counsellor.  I  check  myself  here 
against  possible  intrusion  upon  your  curric- 
ulum. It  is  the  province  of  the  technical 
teaching  in   pastoral  theology,  which   province 


54  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

I  am  trying  not  to  usurp  in  these  lectures,  to 
set  before  you  in  detail  the  various  occasions 
in  the  parish  life  upon  which  pastoral  counsel 
is  apt  to  be  sought.  Suffice  it  to  say  here, 
that  all  parish  problems  revolve  around  homes. 

People  come  to  a  true  pastor,  more  than 
you  might  think,  with  their  home  problems, 
how  yonder  invalid  is  to  be  provided  for,  how 
this  son  or  daughter  is  to  go  to  college,  when 
there  isn't  bread  enough  to  go  round,  how  a 
neighbor  who  is  a  born  mule  is  to  be  made  over 
into  anything  else.  The  real  problem  in  such 
a  case  is  usually  that  of  two  mules !  The  pas- 
tor must  have  a  sane,  wise  word  to  say  in  ref- 
erence to  a  hundred  practical  questions. 

A  young  minister  settled  in  a  farming 
community,  gained  a  reputation  without  know- 
ing it  by  the  way  he  answered  a  question 
which  two  farmers  brought  to  him,  thinking 
to  entrap  him.  "  Shall  that  piece  of  land  be 
put  to  corn  or  to  oats?"  they  asked  him. 
The  young  theologue,  who  had  mother  wit, 
but  no  more  knowledge  of  farming  than  of 
Sanskrit,  answered  with  solemnity,  **  I  should 
let  it  £-0  to  grass! "  They  took  the  reckless 
bit  of  slang  as  an  expert  judgment,  and  his 
reputation   was   made.      (But,    gentlemen,  just 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND.  COUNSELLOR  55 

one   suggestion    here.       Close  your  own   inter- 
views! 

If  a  man  be  a  mere  pulpit  performer,  he 
will  interest  an  audience,  and  when  they  have 
become  familiar  with  his  special  variety  of 
stage  show,  they  will  gently  insinuate  that 
Providence  has  other  fields  where,  no  doubt^ 
that  particular  style  of  performance  will  be 
freshly  appreciated,  and  never  having  touched 
the  home,  the  home  will  not  miss  him  when  he 
goes.  But  the  man  who  means  to  mean  much 
as  a  Christian  minister  will  discover  that  the 
home  is  the  nerve  of  the  Parish.  Why  should 
it  not  be?  The  child  is  there — and  the  dead. 
The  very  dwelling,  as  I  once  heard  Beecher 
say,  is  "stained  through  and  through  with 
soul-color,"  and  everything  pastoral  depends 
upon  the  way  in  which  the  pastor  is  able  to 
enter  that  home  door. 

Now  what  such  a  home  needs  in  its  minister 
is  a  comrade  who  is  so  much  a  comrade  that 
by  the  sheer  weight  of  wise  love  he  becomes 
fit  counsellor.  The  function  of  counsel  grows 
naturally  out  of  the  fellowship  of  the  friend. 

The  pastor  must  incarnate  that  combination* 
No  one  else  can  do  so  quite  so  well.  The  posi- 
tion and  power  of  the  family  physician  come 


56  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

nearest  to  it,  and  in  certain  respects  are 
superior.  But  the  arena  for  counsel  is  not  so 
wide  as  with  the  pastor,  and  the  pastor  lifts 
his  hand  when  the  doctor  lets  his  fall. 

And  just  here  it  seems  worth  while  to 
say  in  passing — cultivate  special  friendship 
with  high-toned  medical  men.  Their  way  of 
looking  at  life  is  apt  to  be  saner  than  yours. 
Your  profession  and  theirs  meet  in  the  care 
and  cure  of  the  same  complex  human  person- 
ality. The  age-old  instinct  which  has  so 
closely  affiliated  the  two  professional  offices  is 
just  and  profound — but  not  to  the  point  of 
confusing  the  two  arenas,  as  some  of  our 
mushy  modern  cults  undoubtedly  do. 

Never  usurp  the  physician's  place;  but  al- 
ways respect  the  physician's  point  of  view. 
Correct  your  own  by  it.  There  is  no  better 
corrective  for  your  doctrinaire  tendency.  All 
good  theology  can  walk  arm  in  arm  with  good 
physics.  Do  not  take  such  a  "header"  into 
the  "  Emmanuel  Movement "  or  any  other,  that 
you  cannot  stand  out  in  honorable,  manly, 
humble  friendship  with  medical  men.  They 
know  more  about  curing  people  than  you  or  I 
know,  or  ever  will  know. 

But,  resuming  the  direct  course  of  the  dis- 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   57 

cussion,  we  here  in  this  conception  of  the  Pas- 
tor as  the  family  comrade-counsellor  come  in 
sight  of  the  second  and  third  of  the  five  quali- 
ties which  were  mentioned  in  the  introductory 
lecture  as  vital  to  the  pastoral  spirit,  viz. — 
sympathy  with  men  and  the  genius  of  rescue. 

SYMPATHY    WITH    MEN 

May  I  say  a  word  of  these  as  we  close  to-day  ? 
Not  sympathy /i?r  men.  Sympathy /br  men  is 
^ym^2iih.y  pro  forma.  It  is  sympathy  standing 
at  a  distance  with  its  gloves  on. 

Sympathy  with  men  is  being  "  touched  with 
the  feeling  of  our  infirmities .?  "  Touched  with  a 
feeling /<?/'  their  infirmities  ? 

O,  no  !  the  great  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  saw  deeper  than  that — "  touched  with 
the  feeling  ^our  infirmities." 

Sympathy  is  a  trait  half-masculine,  half- 
feminine  and,  therefore,  wholly  pastoral.  It  is 
the  instant  instinct  to  realize  the  other  man's 
point  of  view,  the  quick  sense  of  his  muscle- 
strain  beneath  his  load.  Sir  Walter,  in  his 
"Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,"  hits  it  off  well 
when  he  calls  it : 

»'  The  silver  link,  the  silken  tie 
Which  heart  to  heart,  and  mind  to  mind 
In  body  and  soul  can  bind." 


S8  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

In  this  sympathetic  insight  is  the  first  half 
of  wise  counsel.  Pastoral  counsel  is  both  un- 
derstanding counsel  and  fellow-feeling  counsel. 

Then  another  point  right  here.  Do  not 
merely  pity  pain ;  respect  pain. 

The  famous  Dr.  Brown,  of  Edinburgh, 
author  of  "  Rab,"  said,  you  may  remember, 
Speaking  of  medical  men,  that  sympathy  les- 
sened as  a  sentiment  only  to  reappear  as  mo- 
tive. But  I  think  that  in  the  instance  of  the 
pastor,  sympathy  both  deepens  as  a  sentiment 
and  strengthens  as  a  motive;  but  first  of  all, 
it  doffs  its  cap  at  the  mystery  of  grief.  I  re- 
member a  story  which  John  B.  Gough,  the 
temperance  lecturer  of  a  generation  ago,  used 
to  tell  with  strange  dramatic  effect,  of  an  in- 
terview he  had  with  a  small  street  messenger 
boy  in  London,  who  said,  "  O  yes,  Sir !  I 
delivers  all  sorts  of  letters.  Sometimes  they 
is  black-edged,  Sir,  then  I  always  lifts  my  cap, 
'fore  I  ring,  Sir !  Then  the  laidy  turns  white, 
when  she  sees  the  black.  Then  I  lifts  my  cap 
again,  Sir !  "  Gentlemen !  always,  somewhere 
or  other  in  the  Parish,  there  is  the  home  where 
you  must  lift  your  cap  '^'fore  you  ring, 
Sir." 

Pain  is  clairvoyant,  is  telepathic.     It  in- 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   59 

stantly  detects  your  mental  attitude  toward  it, 
and  this  mental  attitude  is  the  real  comforter. 
That  keen,  roused,  delicate,  reverential  out- 
reach and  yearning  over  the  personal  pain, 
anxious  first  of  all  to  do  justice  to  it,  to  under- 
stand it,  not  to  intrude  upon  it,  to  treat  it  v^ith 
equity,  then  to  relieve  it  if  possible,--such 
sympathy  as  this  is  all  but  almighty. 

"What  shall  I  say  to  the  afflicted?"  one 
of  you  asked  me.  Say?  Nothing,  perhaps; 
just  a  grip  of  the  hand,  and  one  straight' look 
into  the  sad  feyes.  What  is  eloquence? 
What  is  consolation?  What  is  counsel?  I 
tell  you,  the  quiver  of  loving  human  fellow- 
ship in  such  a  silent  instant  is  more  eloquent, 
being  human,  than  God's  singing  seraph  him- 
self could  be.  Thank  God  that  our  Christ 
was  born  of  woman! 

Then  again,  and  at  the  opposite  pole  of  the 
psychologic  balance,  sometimes  humor,  if  gen- 
tle, is  better  than  tears.  A  smile,  with  a  choke 
in  your  throat  at  the  same  time,  goes  far. 

"  Do  you  always  pray  in  a  sick  room?  "  one 
of  you  asked  me.  No,  I  should  need  to  be 
prayed  for  myself  if  I  did.  Only  I'm  apt  to 
pray  when  a  hard  man  lies  low  and  doesn't 
expect  prayer,  though  the  prayer  is  just  as 


6o  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

likely  to  be  made  standing,  in  the  quarter  minute 
when  I  grip  his  hand  as  I  rise  to  go.  God  hasn't 
much  use  for  prayers  that  depend  on  kneeling, 
though  kneeling  is  well,  too,  in  its  place. 

There  is  a  humor  even  which  prays  well  be- 
cause it  loves  much.  There  is  a  gaiety  that  is 
born  of  the  Resurrection.  In  a  word,  it  is  the 
natural,  the  spontaneous,  the  fraternal  that  is 
ever  straining  on  in  Christ's  way  towards  the 
advisory,  the  intercessory,  the  mediatorial,  that 
wins  and  masters. 

Do  as  you  would  like  the  other  man  to  do  by 
you,  if  the  case  were  turned  round ;  yet  ever  we 
revert  to  the  principle,  that  the  goal  to  be 
reached  is  something  so  delicate  and  subtle  and 
fine,  that  no  rule  can  reach  it ;  no  formal  pre- 
meditation can  compass  it.  Have  the  Christian 
comrade-soul,  and  then  trust  its  spontaneous 
intuition  and  impulse.  A  preacher  said  to 
McCheyne,  "I  have  been  preaching  on  the 
doctrine  of  Eternal  Retribution  to-day.**  **  Did 
you  preach  it  tenderly  ?  "  said  McCheyne. 

THE    GENIUS   OF    RESCUE 

So  finally  to-day  we  come  in  sight  of  our 
third  quality  in  the  pastoral  spirit — the  genius 
of   rescue;  and   here   again  I  do  not  mean   a 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   6i 

mere  helter-skelter  rush  down  upon  the  shore 
where  the  surf  is  thundering. 

Mark  also  this,  our  phrase  is  not  a  genius 
for  rescue — (only  the  adepts  and  rare  experts 
have  that)  but  there  is  a  certain  genius  of  res- 
cue, which  may  dwell  and  ought  to  dwell  con- 
stantly in  any  man  who  is  fitting  himself  to  be 
a  pastor. 

What  I  mean  is  the  constant  effort  at  a  large, 
fair  grasp  upon  helpful  horizon  conditions.  It 
is  a  quick  sense  of  the  criticaln'ess  of  moments, 
an  alertness  as  to  possible  recombinations  of 
the  elements  of  situations.  It  is  the  habit  of 
instant  translation  of  sentiment  into  action. 
It  is  something  at  once  tense  and  tender, 
rapid  and  practical,  dwelling  in  the  constant 
mood  and  turn  of  mind.  This  is  what  I  mean 
by  the  genius  of  rescue. 

You  will  realize  at  once  that  the  scope  of 
this  impulse  and  motive  is  very  broad.  Every 
parish  has  its  tragedy.  Rescue  is  not  a  con- 
ventional revival-meeting  word,  alone  or 
mainly.  It  means  incessant  watch  and  inces- 
sant fight  for  some  imperilled  life.  Satan's 
crew  are  on  the  heels  of  men,  and  they  do  not 
know  it.  Young  men  are  crowding  the  gay 
vestibules  that  open  back  into  seductive  cor- 


62  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

ridors  that  curve,  away  and  away,  into  the 
hells  of  shame. 

All  along  the  moral  line  the  Pastor  rides, 
runs,  calls  aloud,  stands  and  pulls  like  a  Titan 
when  he  cannot  call.  No  other  man  is  sen- 
tinel. No  other  man  is  messenger.  No  other 
man  cares  or  dares  to  assume  the  role  of  moral 
rescuer.  The  Pastor  cannot  but  assume  it. 
Practically  it  is  the  Pastor  or  nobody. 

He  ahvays  sees  humanity  against  its  tre- 
mendous back-ground  of  moral  danger,  and 
this  vision  is  an  integral  part  of  the  pastoral 
consciousness. 

Nor  is  this  saving,  rescuing  impulse  the 
mere  reflex  of  some  problematical  eschatology. 
It  is  not  a  mere  crude  evangelistic  fervon 
The  rescue  it  seeks  is  both  physical  and  moral 
rehabilitation.  It  can  carry  a  loaf  of  bread, 
and  then  pray  all  the  better  while  the  man 
eats.  Nor  is  there  anything  mawkish  or  over- 
done in  the  expression  of  this  ardor  to  save. 

One  of  the  men  I  know  in  our  profession 
who  has  it  most,  shows  it  least,  as  you  might 
casually  meet  him. 

Let  me  illustrate.  I  used  to  do  a  bit  of 
climbing  in  the  High  Alps.  Your  first-rate 
guide,  as  I  have  had  some  occasion  to  know, 


PASTOR  AS  COMRADE  AND  COUNSELLOR   63 

will  not  show  what  there  is  in  him,  all  wait- 
ing and  ready,  until  a  rope  snaps  or  a  man 
stumbles,  and  then  his  movement  is  quick  as  a 
leopard.  But  the  genius  of  rescue  is  all  the 
time  alive  in  him.  He  never  hesitates.  He 
is  "  all  there,"  as  we  say,  on  the  instant,  and 
all  ready. 

So  the  rescuing,  pastoral  power  in  a  man  is 
a  life-line,  coiled,  and  coiled  so  that  it  doesn't 
kink  in  the  sudden,  swift  uncoiling. 

Such  a  comrade-counsellor,  combining  the 
spirit  of  sympathy  with  the  rescuing  genius,  is 
therefore,  always  a  man  on  an  errand;  and 
here  is  his  professional  freedom  and  power. 
Have  your  ministry  charged  with  this  burn- 
ing sense  of  errand.  For  this  is  the  note  of 
supreme  practical  efficacy,  the  indentification 
of  a  man  at  the  full  pitch  of  his  roused  power, 
with  an  errand  that  matches  the  power. 

The  Pastor  will  have  the  manner  of  the 
errand-man.  He  will  be  as  good-naturedly 
but  inflexibly  chary  of  the  waste  of  time  as  the 
driven  physician  is.  The  street  will  come  to 
know  him  as  a  man  whom  you  mustn't  stop  for 
desultory  chat,  any  more  than  you  would  stop 
a  physician  answering  a  hurry  call,  and  when 
some  officious  saint  stops  you  at  the  corner  to 


54  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

obtain  the  latest  information  as  to  the  family 
you  have  just  visited,  you  v^ill  dare  to  say 
with  the  merest  flicker  of  a  gentle  smile :  *  my 
friend,  the  ministry  listens,  but  never  speaks/ 

A  hand-grip,  a  cordial  v^ord,  then  swiftly 
on!  Don't  dally  and  be  repetitious  either  in 
the  pulpit  or  out  of  it.  From  pious  prolixity 
save  us,  Good  Lord!  Let  every  hour  mean 
something.  Christian  comradeship  is  athletic- 
Pastoral  counsel  is  given  on  the  march.  It 
carries  an  instant  practical  meaning  which 
every  one  can  recognize. 

I  once  preached  a  sermon  on  the  Parables. 
After  church,  at  dinner,  my  kind  host  turned 
to  his  little  daughter,  who  had  attended  church 
with  her  father,  and  said :  "  Well,  Sadie,  can 
you  tell  now  what  a  Parable  is?  "  "  Yes,  sir," 
said  the  little  Sadie,  promptly,  and  without  a 
suspicion  of  incivility.  "What  is  it,  my 
dear?"  "It  is  this,  papa:  A  parable  is  a 
heavenly  truth  without  any  earthly  meaning." 

She  didn't  understand  the  burst  that  fol- 
lowed.   I  did,  and  burned  that  sermon. 

Gentlemen,  make  your  pastorate,  however 
high  and  heavenly,  have  earthly  meaning. 


LECTURE   III 

THE  PASTOR  AS   SPIRITUAL   SPON- 
SOR  AND    SOCIAL    MEDIATOR 


THE  PASTOR  AS  SPIRITUAL  SPONSOR 
AND    SOCIAL   MEDIATOR 

You   have   been,    I   am   sure,   alive    to   the 
danger,  which  in  our  course  of  thought,  up  to 
this  point,  we  have  incurred.     In  our  three- 
fold endeavor  in  these  lectures,  first  to  avoid 
trenching  upon  the  right  of  eminent  domain 
belonging  to  your  professors ;  second,  to  main- 
tain simplicity  of  address,  without  rhetorical 
embellishment,  just  as  we  talked  the  ground 
over  two  months  ago ;  and,  finally,  to  approach 
the  higher  levels  of  the  pastoral  ideal  from  the 
plain,  human  ground-floor  of  Christian  experi- 
ence and  psychological  law,  rather  than  from 
the  assumptions  of  an  ex  cathedra  ordination, 
we  have  risked  this  serious  danger — that  of 
seeming  to  belittle  the  greatness  and  sacred- 
ness  of  the  pastoral  office  itself.     That  such  a 
charge  does  not  lie  legitimately  against  our 
scheme  of  thought,  considered  as  a  whole,  I 
wish  to-day  to  make  clear. 

I  do  not  indeed  seek  to  hide  from  anyone 
what  by  this  time  is  evident  enough,  that  we 
67 


68  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

adopt  on  the  whole  what  may  be  called  the 
naturalistic  rather  than  the  sacramentarian 
conception  of  the  Pastoral  office,  and  yet  the 
word  naturalistic  does  not  express  the  whole 
of  it.  If  our  friends  insist  upon  a  label  they 
will  perhaps  call  it  the  "Broad  Church,"  rather 
than  the  "High  Church"  view.  And  they  will 
summon  as  its  sponsors  men  like  Bushnell, 
Beecher,  Brooks,  rather  than  Liddon  and  New- 
man. But  we  protest  against  being  thus 
labelled.  We  insist  indeed  that  our  view  is  not 
the  technical  Broad  Church  view  as  such  at  all. 
We  hold  that  the  view  we  are  presenting,  if 
taken  in  its  totality,  includes  the  vital  content 
of  the  High  Church  conception  though  not  in 
its  usual  form  of  statement.  Possibly  this  will 
be  more  evident  as  we  proceed. 

Our  topic,  which  you  will  recognize  in  a 
moment,  as  the  center  and  heart  of  the  series, 
is  t/ie  Pastor  as  Spiritical  Sponsor  and  Social 
Mediator  in  Chf  isfs  name. 

Restating  briefly  our  main  position,  our 
apprehension  is  something  like  this,  that  accord- 
ing to  the  record  of  the  New  Testament  and 
the  witness  of  Christian  experience,  the  normal 
development  of  the  pastoral  spirit  proceeds  from 


THE  PASTOR  AS  SPIRITUAL  SPONSOR      6g 

the  humanly  fraternal  to  the  spiritually  media- 
torial ;  that  in  the  pastorate  the  Christian  man 
and  comrade  becomes  the  Christlike  counsellor; 
and  the  counsellor  the  sponsor,  and  the  sponsor 
Christ's  social  mediator  among  men.  He  be- 
comes the  under-shepherd  of  souls,  and  in  that 
sense  a  priest  of  God,  clothed  with  the  dignity 
and  holy  power  of  a  truly  sacramental  func- 
tion, declaring  Christ's  great  mediation  be- 
tween man  and  God,  and  so  mediating  socially 
between  man  and  man.  "  Stewards  of  the 
mysteries  of  God "  is  the  simple  yet  daring 
Apostolic  phrase.  But  in  all  this,  as  I  take 
pains  to  reiterate,  he  crowds  nothing  of  him- 
self into  Christ's  place  any  more  than  the 
ambassador  ursurps  the  throne  of  his  King. 

The  ministry  is  "  in  its  inmost  nature,  a 
bearing  testimony,  and  its  most  effective  ope- 
ration rests  principally  upon  the  giving  of 
a  living  and  spirit-filled  testimony,"  says 
Theodore  Christlieb. 

Nor  is  it  meant  that  this  mental  advance  or 
transition  from  comradeship  to  sponsorship  is 
a  matter  of  time  or  of  mechanical  division. 

From  the  very  start  the  two  great  constitu- 
ent elements,  the  brotherly  and  the  priestly, 


70  THE    CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

are  interwoven  in  the  Pastor's  life.  The  or- 
der of  development  we  are  tracing  between  the 
two  is — ^(to  employ  again  the  word  I  am  us- 
ing with  a  wearying  frequency),  psychological 
rather  than  chronological.  A  minister  doesn't 
work  ten  years  as  a  comrade,  then  after  that 
go  on  as  a  divinely  commissioned  priest.  On 
the  contrary,  every  throb  of  comradeship 
swiftly  re-appears  in  the  earnestness  of  the 
sponsor  and  the  efficiency  of  the  mediator. 

I  adhere  to  this  word,  mediator  and  media- 
torship,  because  it  describes  the  fine,  golden 
goal  of  our  ministerial  race.  I  trust  to  your 
intelligence  and  fairness  not  to  misunderstand 
the  word,  because  although  now  captured  by 
the  ecclesiastical  specialists  and  clothed  with  a 
ritualistic  badge  and  uniform,  it  yet  remains  a 
broad  and  mighty  human  word,  and  in  its 
etymology  and  especially  its  new  social  signifi- 
cance to-day,  it  means  the  very  thing  I  mean. 

But  while  brother  and  priest  are  ever  join- 
ing hands  in  the  Pastor's  mind,  yet  there  is  a 
development  from  one  into  the  other  as  the 
years  go  on.  In  this  lecture  I  am  to  speak  of 
this  development.  Unless  I  mistake  it  is  es- 
sentially the  reflex  of  the  Pastor's  own  deep- 
ening acquaintance  with  Christ.     Just  as  the 


THE    PASTOR    AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR      71 

Pastor  learns  comradeship  by  fellowship  with 
the  human  Jesus,  so  he  learns  sponsorship 
through  fellowship  with  the  Divine  Christ. 
In  the  depths  of  personal  Christian  experience, 
the  minister  enters  more  and  more  into  living 
fellowship  with  his  Lord,  as  the  growing 
branch  roots  itself  more  and  more  within  the 
vine,  and  Christ  is  apprehended  not  only 
as  the  Beautiful  Galilean  Companion  and 
Teacher,  but  as  Divine  Mediator,  Redeemer 
and  Master. 

Henchman  the  minister  becomes,  and  knight 
of  the  Crucified.  Christ's  spirit  breathes  upon 
his  spirit  and  what  follows  is  a  real,  though  in- 
definable oneness  of  life  between  them.  So 
the  New  Testament  teaches.  And  this  moral 
and  spiritual  sharing  of  life  with  life  between 
minister  and  Master  works  to  winnow  and 
purify  the  man's  own  soul,  so  that  it  shall  be- 
come a  little  more  achromatic — if  I  may  ven- 
ture a  pedantic  word,  transmitting,  in  juster 
color  and  outline,  something,  if  God  will,  of 
the  image  and  message  of  Christ.  The  Pas- 
tor thus  himself  becomes  a  true  sponsor  and 
after  his  manner  a  social  mediator  in  Christ's 
name  among  men. 

It  is  to  three  aspects  of  this  maturing  proc- 


72  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

ess  in  the  Pastor's  mind  and  to  three  fields 
of  its  objective  expression  that  I  am  to  ask 
your  attention  to-day.  But,  my  fellow 
students,  I  confess  to  a  feeling  of  shrinking 
and  of  awe  even,  in  endeavoring  to  put  into 
what  must  be  poor,  pale  words,  any  hint  of 
this  inner  story  of  the  Pastor's  heart.  You 
remember  how  at  this  point  in  our  talk  to- 
gether we  swore  the  o^th  against  all  mawk- 
ishness,  and  pledged  our  manhood  to  sim- 
plicity, lest  we  should  parody  or  profane  this 
deep  experience. 

So  sternly  ethical  is  the  law  of  it,  yet  so 
preciously  spiritual  in  its  sequel,  with  such  a 
mortal  loneliness  sometimes,  yet  with  entranc- 
ing visions  of  the  pastoral  ideal,  together  with 
an  unrelaxing  clench  upon  first-hand  human 
reality,  that  one  is  daunted  by  any  notion  of 
describing  it;  and  I  am  fain  to  fall  back  upon 
your  prayers,  in  some  such  words  as  those  of 
the  fervid  and  devoted  St.  Bernard,  Abbot  of 
Clairvaux,  who,  at  the  outset  of  one  of  his  ad- 
dresses, thus  confesses  his  inadequacy: 

"Behind  these  curtains  of  words,  I  feel 
that  an  indescribable  holiness  and  sublimity 
are  veiled,  which  I  dare  not  touch,  save  at  the 
command  of  Him  who  guards  their  mystery." 


THE   PASTOR   AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR     73 

"  But  in  His  Name,"  St.  Bernard  continues,  "  I 
pass  on.  It  will  devolve  upon  you  mean- 
while, by  your  prayers,  that  we  may  the  more 
readily  meditate  upon  a  subject  which  requires 
attentive  minds,  if  it  may  be  that  the  humble 
knocker  at  the  door,  by  his  humility,  may  per- 
ceive that  which  the  over-confident  explorer 
would  seek  in  vain." 

THE   ETHICAL    SUBSTRATUM 

First,  then,  let  us  notice  and  weigh  well 
the  constant  ethical  substratum  in  the  Pas- 
toral consciousness. 

.We  start  where  we  left  off  in  the  last  lec- 
ture,— with  our  feet  upon  the  solid  human 
floor  of  character  and  comradeship — as  recog- 
nized, brought  into  relief  and  trained  into  ac- 
tion by  the  habit  of  personal  fellowship  with 
the  life  of  the  human  Jesus.  Now  the  thing 
to  insist  upon  is  that  no  additional  or  subse- 
quent spiritual  illumination  supersedes  or  min- 
imizes this  ethical  substratum. 

May  I  assert  with  all  the  care  and  force 
at  my  command  that  the  Christian  Ministry 
stands  or  falls  by  its  ethic.  This  must  be  even 
more  than  an  average  or  conventional  ethic. 
It  must  be  the  common  ethic  of  high  human- 


5^4  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

ity  and  it  must  be  Christ's  ethic  too.  The 
earnest  young  minister,  before  he  has  gone 
very  far  in  his  pastoral  experience,  finds  him- 
self within  the  swing  of  a  mood,  at  once  of 
immitigable  sternness  and  of  overpowering  at- 
traction. He  comes  sharp  upon  the  convic- 
tion that  he  must  not  only  be  personally  noble, 
but  noble  in  a  way  high  and  unique,  if  he 
would  be  worth  much  as  a  pastor. 

One  of  your  own  number  asked  me  this 
question,  substantially : — "  How  can  I  make 
my  ideal  of  manners  at  once  gay  enough  for 
the  young  and  grave  enough  for  the  old  ?  " 

I  answer,  one  cannot,  except  by  rising  to  a 
summit,  a  moral  ridge  so  lofty  that  the  vision 
'extends  and  the  streams  flow  in  both  directions 
at  once. 

Gentlemen,  I  am  preferring  to  quote  you 
rather  than  to  quote  from  the  books,  because 
the  books  deal  chiefly  in  generalities ;  but  your 
questions  are  hot  from  the  furnace  of  personal 
debate  and  endeavor. 

The  pastor  realizes,  to  the  core,  that  his 
pastorate  is  an  offense  and  a  farce  before  God 
and  his  own  soul  unless  it  be  the  reflex  of  an 
uncommon  striving  after  all  that   is  high    and 


THE   PASTOR   AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR     7$ 

fine  in  personal  character.  He  enters  thus 
upon  the  Via  Sanctissima  of  his  Hfe. 

In  the  tremendous  annals  of  early  and 
mediaeval  asceticism,  he  reads  the  century-old 
witness  to  this  principle,  that  a  lofty  personal 
ideal  is  the  pastor's  first  prerequisite. 

The  method  of  this  ascetic  self-discipline, 
seems  to  him  mistaken,  but  its  spirit  he  must 
honor ;  and  the  very  method  itself,  perhaps,  he 
half  unaware  invokes,  to  some  extent,  in  the 
intimate  places  of  his  life,  v^here  no  friend 
goes. 

Goethe  says  that  something  of  the  hero  lies 
latent  in  every  man.  Certainly  a  kind  of 
moral  heroism  denotes  the  pastoral  vocation. 
This  latent  moral  heroism  flashes  up  within 
the  man.  The  young  minister  trims  the  lamp 
of  his  own  moral  freedom,  God's  firelight  in 
his  mind,  and  in  thie  exhilaration  of  free 
choice,  with  a  strangely  mingled  sense  of  the 
duty  of  honor  and  the  glory  of  privilege,  he 
sets  himself,  in  every  live  stitch  and  inch  of 
him,  into  the  strain  of  an  unrelaxing  race  to 
read  his  title  clear  to  high-terraced  manhood, 

"  Every  man  that  striveth  in  the  games 
exerciseth  self-control  in  all  things."     "Now 


76  THE  CHRISTIAN.  PASTOR 

they  do  it  to  receive  a  corruptible  crown,  but 
we  an  incorruptible."  "I  buffet  my  body." 
The  English  weakly  renders  the  energy  of  the 
Greek.  The  truer  paraphrase  would  be,  "  I 
strike  myself  beneath  the  eye."  "I  beat  my- 
self black  and  blue."  So  cries  the  warrior 
Paul.  "  Lest  by  any  means  after  that  I  have 
preached  to  others  I  myself  should  be  re- 
jected." So  the  young  pastor  pursues  his 
stern  and  glad  struggle  of  which  no  man 
knows. 

Alone  in  his  room,  or  walking  the  forest 
aisles,  or  upon  the  crags  of  the  mountains,  for 
the  pastor  is  a  cragsman,  he  woos  his  moral 
ideals,  trying  to  make  of  himself  God's  court- 
eous and  courageous  gentleman.  If  he  meets 
Apolyon,  as  he  will,  disguised,  he  detects  him, 
closes  with  him  and  throttles  him.  He  be- 
comes possessed  with  the  conviction  that  his 
pastoral  instrument  is  his  own  soul  and  that 
like  unto  the  graver,  who  first  tempers  his  tool 
in  the  furnace,  then  adds  the  edge  and  the 
burnish  with  delicate  and  patient  care,  so  he 
must  hammer  and  refine  himself,  grind  down 
and  temper  his  own  mind  and  spirit  in  order 
that  he  shall  be  fit  (or  rather  let  me  say  a  little 
less  unfit,  for  we  dare  not  use  a  bolder  word) 


THE   PASTOR   AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR     77 

to  be  a  pastoral  graving  tool  in  his  Master's 
hand. 

I  anticipate  your  obvious  criticism.  You 
are  saying  that  in  all  this  account  of  the  pas- 
toral morale  there  is  nothing  new.  Certainly 
there  is  not,  but  the  relation  of  that  morale 
to  the  challenge  of  the  present  age  is  new,  and 
each  man's  task  in  meeting  that  challenge  is 
an  'experiment  as  new  for  him  and  almost  as 
exigent  as  was  the  voyage  of  Ulysses. 

But  this  ethical  endeavor  is  not  the  end. 
The  Pastor  "  follows  on  to  know  the  Lord.'* 
He  comes  more  and  more  "to  know  the  love 
of  Christ  which  passeth  knowledge."  Here 
in  reverence  we  draw  near  to  that  deeper  rev- 
elation of  Christ  within  the  soul  as  the  Su- 
preme Mediator  and  Divine  Shepherd  and 
Master,  which  is  the  "  Holy  of  Holies,"  not 
less  in  pastoral  development  than  in  Christian 
experience. 

THE  SPIRITUAL  DISCLOSURE  OF   CHRIST 

Second :  Still  following  on  in  the  analogy  of 
the  Gospels,  we  discover  that  this  initial  way- 
side fellowship  with  the  Figure  of  the  Nazarene 
as  perfect  human  Friend  and  Model,  deepens 
by   imperceptible   gradations   into   the   adoring 


78  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

realization  of  His  Divine  Supremacy  and  Re- 
deeming Power. 

This  is  no  matter  of  theological  technique, 
or  of  orthodox  limitation.  In  the  roster  of 
these  worshippers  we  find  Channing  and  Rob- 
ertson as  well  as  Wesley  and  Fenelon. 

The  spiritual  quality  in  the  Sacrifice  of 
Christ  appears.  He  is  the  Son  of  God.  He 
is  the  supreme  Incarnation  of  the  Supreme. 
He  is  the  Holy  Mediator,  the  Saviour  and  Lord 
of  the  renewed  and  transformed  life,  and  the 
growing  apprehension  of  this  spiritual  loveliness 
and  ascendency  floods  the  mind. 

Thus  the  young  Pastor  comes  to  live  and 
work  in  a  strange  kind  of  wonder  at  the  totality 
of  his  Lord's  human-divine  personality,  upon 
the  physical  and  spiritual  lineaments  of  which 
he  dwells  with  a  lover's  loyal  joy,  so  that  he 
literally  "  walks  with  Jesus  "  every  day  through 
Palestine  on  his  way  to  his  own  parish,  and  in 
any  pastoral  service  seems  to  himself  to  be  only 
Christ's  servant. 

"Slave"  was  Paul's  quivering  word.  Noth- 
ing else,  indeed,  seems  to  him  of  comparable 
value,  beside  this  effort  to  make  himself  a 
creature    not    wholly    out    of    key    with    the 


THE  PASTOR  AS  SPIRITUAL  SPONSOR      79 

mediating  Divine  manhood  of  his  Lord  and 
with  the  rich  privilege  of  being  His  Spokes- 
man. This  is  his  quest  of  the  "Holy  Grail" 
and  he  pursues  it  with  an  earnestness  at  once 
ethical  and  spiritual,  the  severity  of  which  he 
must  not  evade,  yet  the  glory  of  which  he 
cannot  describe. 

You  will  pardon,  gentlemen,  what  I  fear  you 
are  finding  a  somewhat  unrelieved  seriousness 
in  the  tension  of  our  discussion  to-day.  But 
I  wish  to  avoid  fancies,  and  at  this  vital  point 
in  the  entire  course  of  our  thoughts,  do  justice 
to  the  glimpses,  which  you  did  me  the  honor  to 
give  me  in  our  personal  talks  together,  into 
the  inner  longing  and  spiritual  purpose  of  your 
hearts. 

I  would  not  speak  in  the  language  of  mysti- 
cism, yet  I  am  speaking  of  what  words  cannot 
tell.  While  the  fundamental  note  of  the  in- 
ner life  remains  ethical,  the  young  Pastor  goes 
not  far  along  this  holy  way  of  manhood-cul- 
ture for  the  pastorate  before  he  perceives  the 
wondrous  figure  of  his  Lord  by  his  side,  and 
it  seems  to  him  almost  as  if  this  Chief  Pastor 
of  Souls,  and  his  own  soul,  reaching  him, 
turns  and   walks  with  him,  to   teach  him   the 


8o  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

I 

art   of   the   under-shepherd.       The    essence   of 

this  experience  is  probably  coincident  with 
that  of  all  true  Christian  hearts  which  enter 
into  the  spiritual  fellowship  of  the  Life  of 
Christ ;  but  the  special  accent  under  which 
this  experience  is  apprehended  is  given  by  the 
specific  thought  and  purpose  of  the  minister's 
own  vocation. 

I  In  this  mood  the  pastor  swings  into  the 
midstream  of  his  calling.  He  clears  that  peril 
of  self  centered-ness  and  masked  pride,  which 
dogs  the  heels  of  the  zealot  or  the  mere 
ethical  expert.  He  escapes  what  Lecky  calls 
**the  melancholy  of  introspection."  He  real- 
izes that  he  must  not  only  be  noble,  but 
noble  in  Christ's  beautiful  and  symmetrical  and 
out-giving  way,  in  order  to  be  Christ's  pastor, 
because  only  Christ's  way  of  living  is  the 
helpfully  mediatorial  way.  The  moral  move- 
ment within  him  is  now  modulated  into  a  finer 
and  more  thrilling  key.  It  rises  into  the 
light.  His  ethical  struggle  becomes  a  com- 
panioned struggle,  and  his  Companion  is  not 
only  his  Model  and  Master  but  his  Saviour  and 
Helper. 

His   moral   ideal   itself    also   becomes   more 


THE   PASTOR   AS  SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR     8i 

finished  and  illumined  and  adds  the  altruistic 
touch.  *  How  shall  I  make  goodness  seem 
beautiful?'  the  Pastor  asks,  *  blending  just- 
ness and  gentleness  ?  *  *  What  is  possible  for 
me  in  taking  into  my  heart  something  of  the 
very  spirit  of  the  Crucified  and  Risen  One,  so 
that  I  may  not  fumble  in  being  the  medium  of 
that  beauty  of  blessing  which  is  the  authentic 
mark  of  His  mediatorial  grace?' 

You  will  say  again,  all  this  is  vague  and 
mystical.  So  in  a  sense  it  is.  But  the  inner 
pastoral  experience  illustrates  the  truth  of  that 
maxim  of  Professor  William  James  as  to  "  the 
reinstatement  of  the  vague  and  inarticulate  to 
its  proper  place  in  our  mental  life.'*  *  In  the 
field  of  realized  motive,  at  all  events,  there  is 
nothing  vague.  A  great  spiritual  aspiration, 
perhaps  the  sublimest  motive  that  can  drive  a 
man,  takes  possession  of  the  young  minister, 
to  become  in  some  little,  far-off  way,  at  least, 
a  medium  between  a  realized  Christ  on  the 
one  hand,  and  a  realized  human  need  on  the 
other. 

Only  character,  he  thinks,  can  accomplish 
this,  but  it  must  be  Christ-like  character  blos- 
soming in  Christ-like  service. 

"What's  white?"  is  still  the  pastor's  stern 

*  As  quoted  by  Pres.  King,  in  "  Rational  Living." 


82  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

cry  for  himself.  What  is  sheer,  naked,  ethical 
honor?  But  what's  warm  as  well  as  white  in 
Christ's  way  of  living  as  related  to  others' 
needs?  This  becomes  not  less  the  ques- 
tion. 

THE    PASSION    OF    SPONSORSHIP. 

Third:  Thus  in  the  depths  of  the  pastor's 
soul,  almost  before  he  knows  it,  is  born  what 
I  have  called,  in  default  of  a  better  phrase,  the 
passion  of  sponsorship. 

This  perhaps  you  will  remember  is  the  third 
of  the  five  features  under  which  in  the  open- 
ing lecture  we  defined  the  pastoral  spirit. 

I  wish  I  could  describe  this  ardor  of  the 
sponsor  so  as  not  to  be  misunderstood.  The 
sentiment  is  not  an  olificial  specialty.  Its  roots, 
as  I  repeat,  are  in  that  spiritual  experience 
which  is  generic  in  the  Christian  heart.  And 
this  surely  is  the  reason  why  so  many  "  lay 
preachers "  are  good  preachers  and  pastors 
too.  But  in  the  pastor's  mind  this  common 
Christian  experience  seems  to  rise  into  the 
sense  as  of  a  spiritual  accrediting, — ^a  humble 
and  daring  hope  that  through  companionship 
with  Christ  and  struggle  to  be  like  Him,  one 
may  share  with  Him  under  His  direction  and 


THE    PASTOR    AS    SPIRITUAL    SPONSOR      83 

in  His  behalf  and  Name  something-  of  His 
"  watch  and  care  "  for  and  with  and  over  the 
flock  of  His  love. 

I  express  the  feeling  poorly,  but  you  will 
perceive  that,  while  it  carries  much  of  the 
spiritual  content  of  the  High  Church  concep- 
tion of  the  Pastorate,  it  is  at  the  opposite  pole 
from  the  pride  of  ecclesiastical  assumption,  or 
the  arrogance  of  official  prerogative. 

The  growth  of  this  peculiar  consciousness 
from  its  fraternal  germ  has  been  natural, 
psychological,  ethical.  Its  prevalent  mood  is 
joyful  and  brave,  although  sane  and  humble. 
In  it  is  what  Burns  calls  "  Ae  spark  o'  Na- 
ture's Fire,"  and  yet  also  something  of  the 
"indwelling  Spirit"  of  St.  John. 

A  true  Pastor's  sponsorship  thus  becomes  to 
him  a  beautiful  spiritual  necessity.  It  simply, 
as  we  say  in  our  vernacular,  has  to  be.  It  is  the 
reflex  of  the  Pastor's  own  most  intimate  sense 
of  Christ  and  of  Men. 

And  I  call  especial  attention  to  the  further 
fact  that  the  impulse  of  this  sponsorship  is,  in 
a  true  sense,  mediatorial.  The  Pastor  does 
not  indeed  look  upon  himself  as  the  source  of 
pastoral  efficiency,  nor  does  he  assume  any 
primary    prerogative.     He    seconds     Christ's 


84  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

care  for  the  flock.  And  he  feels  that  only  so 
far  as  he  is  personally  worthy,  can  he  thus 
represent  his  Master.  But  the  Pastor  does 
aspire  to  express  in  human  and  social  type  and 
form  something  of  the  spirit  and  power  of  the 
Great  Mediation  of  Christ.  He  assumes  indeed 
no  authority  as  of  himself.*  He  is  interpreta- 
tive. He  is  ambassadorial,  to  use  St.  Paul's 
eloquent  word.     He  is  distributive. 

Do  not  be  afraid  of  this  human  use  of  the 
great  v^ords.  Surely  nothing  else  than  this  is 
the  New  Testament  idea.  How  does  Christ 
himself  become  the  supreme  Mediator? 
Through  His  Incarnation,  through  the  glory 
of  personal  character  carried  out  to  its  ulti- 
mate loveliness  and  offered  with  love's  own 
self-sacrifice  to  effect  moral  restoration.  In- 
carnation is  the  true  antecedent  of  mediation. 
So  the  Pastor,  as  the  under-shepherd,  shares 
in  a  true  mediatorial  function,  but  he  attains 
to  this  by  virtue  not  of  a  statutory  commission, 
but  through  the  medium  of  his  own  earnest- 
ness and  elevation  of  spiritual  endeavor,  seek- 
ing to  realize  Christ's  life  within  his  own,  and 
so  represent  Him  to  his  flock. 

*  "  It  is  no  longer  I  that  live,  but  Christ  liveth  in 
me." — Gal.  2 :  20. 


THE   PASTOR    AS   SPIRITUAL    SPONSOR     85 

I  hear  you  say  again  that  I  am  becoming 
still  more  esoteric,  mystical.  No,  my  com- 
rades. I  am  seeking  to  be  Scriptural.  I  am 
seeking  to  recall  the  genuine  pastoral  experi- 
ence of  the  Christian  ages.  There  is  a  con- 
dition of  the  inner  spirit  at  once  fraternal  and 
sacramental,  charged  with  the  sense  of  Christ 
and  of  His  errand,  which  affects  the  man 
through  and  through,  like  some  quick  fire  or 
wine  of  God,  reaching  even  to  the  outward 
bearing,  and  keeping  the  frame  erect,  the 
movement  alert,  the  eye  clear,  the  hand  steady 
and  kind,  the  whole  man  on  a  quick  pitch  of 
beautiful  power,  eager  to  understand,  free  to 
judge,  ready  to  serve,  able  to  save. 

And  how  is  this  pastoral  sponsorship  illus- 
trated? It  is  shown  in  a  constant  temper  of 
gentle  reference  to  the  invisible  Chief  Shep- 
herd.    Christ  is  always  invoked. 

The  .pastoral  temper  incessantly  endeavors 
to  carry  out  the  Divine  shepherding  of  Christ. 
It  is  full  alike  of  power  and  humility,  of 
firmness  and  tenderness.  It  has  the  keen, 
patient  intentness  of  the  watch.  I  have 
called  it  a  passion.  It  does  grow  to  be  such. 
The  Pastor  would  rather  care  for  his  flock  at 
whatever  cost  than  do  anything  else. 


86  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

May  I  allude  to  still  another  feature  of  this 
temper?  Charged  with  comradeship,  it  also 
charges  itself  with  responsibility.  It  would 
guarantee  the  flock.  Sponsorship  desires  to 
take  the  place  of  that  for  which  it  cares,  as  in 
that  almost  fierce  apostrophe  of  St.  Paul 
(Rom.  9.3 :)  "  I  could  wish  that  I  myself  were 
anathema  from  Christ  for  my  brethren's  sake." 
He  speaks  to  the  Galatians  of  "  travailing  in 
birth  "  for  his  people.  The  Pastor  would  be 
true  at  once  in  both  directions,  towards  the 
very  heart  of  Christ  and  towards  the  very 
heart  of  man.  Out  go  both  his  arms,  the  one 
to  grasp  Christ,  the  other  to  grasp  his  brother 
man;  and  if  this  figure  of  the  extended  arms 
implies  a  kind  of  crucifixion,  in  love's  ache  to 
save,  here  also  he  is  "  crucified  with  Christ." 

He  cannot  minister  the  water  of  life, — so  he 
feels, — ^unless  his  very  hand  touches  the  hand 
of  his  Lord  in  taking  it.  He  is  the  cup-bearer. 
How  ?  By  what  he  conveys  ?  Yes,  but  more 
by  what  he  is. 

And  on  the  other  hand  he  identifies  himself 
with  the  flock.  He  gives  his  bond  for  them. 
To  employ  our  current  vernacular,  he  ''  signs  " 
for  them.     He  is  their  sponsor.     Their  life  is 


THE   PASTOR    AS   SPIRITUAL    SPONSOR      87 

his  life.  He  gives  himself  as  their  hostage. 
He  stands  voucher  for  them,  and  for  their 
future,  and  he  means  to  make  his  vouching 
good.  In  this  brave  yearning  he  summons  the 
picture  of  his  flock  before  his  mind.  What 
does  he  behold  ?  All  abroad  on  the  mountains 
the  sheep  are  scattered,  and  into  the  cleft  of 
the  rock  falls  the  lamb.  Valiant  and  patient, 
a  veritable  shepherd,  he  watches,  ranges,  waits, 
feeds,  fights,  if  need  be.  He  is  always  keyed 
to  his  calling.  He  never  forgets  or  ignores 
his  flock.  That  flock  is  his,  as  being  his 
Master's.  A  love  without  a  name,  so  fearless 
is  it,  and  gentle  and  strong  and  self-forgetting, 
dwells  with  him  night  and  day  for  that  flock. 
He  is,  before  God,  its  representative.  "We 
were  gentle  in  the  midst  of  you,"  writes  St. 
Paul  to  the  Thessalonians,  "as  when  a  nurse 
cherisheth  her  own  children."  "  Well-pleased 
to  impart  unto  you  not  the  Gospel  of  God 
only,  but  also  our  own  souls,  because  ye  were 
become  very  dear  to  us." 

While  taking  nothing  away  from  their  own 
direct  and  individual  responsibility,  the  Pas- 
tor yet  holds  his  people  in  his  arms  as  he  might 
his  own  child  at  the  Baptism.     And  that  won- 


88  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

derful  word  Sponsor,  in  the  etymological  es- 
sence of  it,  in  the  sacramental  sweep  of  it,  en- 
titles the  rhythm  of  his  life. 

Then,  too,  the  same  great  music  of  media- 
torial sponsorship  is  heard  in  a  multitude  of 
little  wayside  notes  rippling  along  through  the 
days. 

Christ's  Pastor  will  be  very  thoughtfully 
courteous  in  little  things,  not  "  touchy,"  not 
fussy,  not  garrulous.  "  Full  of  mercy  and 
good  fruits,  without  variance,  without  hypoc- 
risy." He  will  have  that  finish  on  the  edge 
which  marks  the  gentleman. 

You  will  observe  all  along  the  interplay  of 
the  two  pastoral  tones,  one  of  which  we  have 
called  the  comrade-like  or  the  fraternal — and 
the  other  the  sponsor-like  or  the  mediatorial. 
The  genuine  pastoral  spirit  of  which  I  am  so 
poorly  speaking  is  the  sanest  thing  alive,  in 
perfect  tune  with  plain,  ordinary  human  life, 
and  yet  th^  Pastor  is  ever  striving  to  echo 
and  re-embody  something  of  the  mediating 
energy  of  the  Divine  Personality  which  so 
entrances  him.  He  emulates  Christ's  exqui- 
site balance.  His  spiritual  symmetry.  His  fel- 
lowship with  nature  and  little  children.  Yet 
at  the  same  time  he  dares  repeat  even  to  the 


THE   PASTOR   AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR     89 

most  wretched  of  sinners  his  Master's  solemn 
adjuration,  "  Go  and  sin  no  more." 

The  Pastor  will  hate  mawkishness  as  he 
hates  the  devil.  He  simply  cannot  let  any 
mean  mood  master  him.  He  smites  at  all 
"blue  devils"  and  keeps  himself  strung  and 
sunny.  He  has  no  patience  with  sanctified 
stagnation.  He  will  be  martial  and  dare  to 
dare.    O !  this  Knight-note  in  our  vocation ! 

And  yet  on  the  other  hand  and  in  the  same 
breath  the  same  man  is  all  alive  to  express  the 
Infinite  Compassion  of  Calvary,  and  his  tones 
will  tremble  with  some  far-off  throb  of  the 
gentleness  of  Gennesaret  as  he  grieves  over 
human  error,  and  murmurs  in  the  ear  of  peni- 
tence, "Thy  faith  hath  saved  thee.  Go  in 
peace." 

"  What  is  your  prevalent  feeling  and  mood 
as  you  face  your  great  congregation?"  I 
once  asked  Mr.  Beecher.  He  looked  at  me  a 
moment  silently,  then  at  something  beyond 
me.  The  great  eyes  grew  humid  and  the 
face  royal  and  tender.  "Compassion,"  he 
replied. 

The  Pastor's  pulse-beat  is  thus  ever  in  two 
scales  which  yet  are  one.  He  is  at  once  com- 
rade and  priest.     He  pushes  the  pace,  and  yet 


90  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

he  will  put  into  every  day  some  Christ-likg 
considerateness  for  him  who  cannot  push  the 
pace,  or  who  even  drops  by  the  way. 

He  keeps  himself  sane  by  a  pinch  of  those 
two  preserving  salts  of  the  higher  life — humor 
and  humility,  and  yet  he  keeps  in  touch  with 
the  wide  world  through  sympathy  and  pity. 
He  is  enamored  of  the  fine  art  of  fidelity.  He 
is  severe  with  himself,  "  downs "  petulance 
and  jealousy,  or  better,  bows  them  out  of 
court  with  a  curious  little  smile;  but  towards 
others  he  is  not  severe,  cultivating  rather  that 
sweet  candor  which  springs  from  steadily  try- 
ing to  be  gently  just. 

He  holds  his  tongue  and  keeps  his  temper: 
yet  Christ  helps  him  to  combine  hatred  of 
shams  with  fairness  to  the  shammer.  He  is 
emulous  of  the  high  and  incorruptible  life, 
and  yet  is  spokesman  for  the  All-forgiving  and 
All-renewing  Love. 

In  a  word,  he  mobilizes  his  whole  energy 
into  the  dual  dialect  of  his  vocation,  both  in 
the  direction  of  personal  ethical  nobleness  and 
of  sacrificial  Christ-like  ministry  to  other 
men.  He  takes  other  men's  moral  ideals  as 
only  the  scaffolding  for  his  own,  and  prac- 
tices the  "one  touch  more"  in  service  which 


THE   PASTOR    AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR     91 

only  the  Chief  Shepherd  knows,  and  for  which 
he  is  never  paid.  He  seeks  the  beauty  of  the 
holy,  the  valor  of  the  true;  but  not  less  the 
outreach  of  the  rescuer  and  the  might  of 
love's  self-sacrifice. 

Ah,  my  Brothers,  my  words  are  thin  and 
far  away  indeed  from  the  greatness  and  glow 
of  that  of  which  I  would  speak ;  but  if  I  do  not 
mistake,  it  is  along  some  such  path  as  this 
that  your  own  thoughts  were  moving  as  w6 
spoke  together  of  the  Pastor's  progress  into 
the  increasing  apprehension  of  that  sacred 
and  high  and  spiritually  mediating  function 
which  Christ  commits  to  him  in  his  calling. 

SOCIAL    MEDIATION 

We  come,  then,  in  our  closing  division  to- 
day, to  a  moment's  glance  out  upon  the  scen- 
ery of  that  threefold  field  where  this  comrade- 
like, sponsor-like  spirit,  so  nobly  ethical,  yet  so 
finally  spiritual,  charged  with  the  sense  of 
Christ,  and,  therefore,  in  some  degree  the 
agent  of  His  mediatorial  grace,  is  to  be  exer- 
cised. 

This  field  comprises  the  individual,  the 
home,  the  community. 


92  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

1st.  The  arena  of  individual  conference 
and  confession. 

2nd.  The  home  problems  of  your  people  on 
their  spiritual  side. 

3rd.  The  religious  life  of  the  Parish  and 
the  community  at  large. 

We  cannot  here  do  more  than  glance  at 
these  wide  domains  of  pastoral  duty,  endeav- 
oring to  determine  simply  the  Pastor's  essen- 
tial relation  to  them.  It  is,  in  a  word,  Socially 
Mediatorial.  You  will  rigorously  bear  in  mind 
our  constant  proposition  that  the  Pastor  is  not 
an  official  dispenser  of  heavenly  blessing.  But 
he  mediates  through  the  natural  agency  of  per- 
sonal trustworthiness,  and  his  mediation  consists 
in  his  Christlike  service  as  the  explainer,  the 
interpreter,  the  harmonizer,  the  peacemaker, 
the  spiritual  inspirer. 

In  other  words  this  mediation  is  distinctively 
social.  In  our  scheme  of  thought  this  point  is 
the  one  chiefly  emphasized.  Pastoral  mediation 
has  to  do  with  the  relations  between  man  and 
man,  class  and  class,  as  determined  by  the 
relation  between  man  and  God.  The  Pastor 
helps  everybody  to  understand  everybody  else, 
and  in  doing  so  to  understand  Christ  most 
of  all. 


THE  PASTOR  AS  SPIRITUAL  SPONSOR     93 
THE    INDIVIDUAL 

Is  it  a  fancy  to  discover  an  element  of 
mediation  in  even  the  most  personal  and  in- 
dividual conference  ?  Here  the  Pastor  mediates 
between  the  two  men  in  the  man  before  him. 
He  must  be  able  to  explain  the  man  to  himself. 
He  applies  to  him  the  seventh  chapter  of  the 
Book  of  Romans.  This  profoundly  beautiful 
style  of  mediation  appears  to  perfection  in  the 
conversations  of  our  Lord  with  individuals, 
which,  as  Nicoll  observes,  "  make  up  so  large  a 
part  of  the  Gospels." 

Here  opens  the  confused  and  critical  realm  of 
personal  wrong-doing,  where  misfortune  and 
fault,  heredity  and  perversity,  ignorance  and  sin 
welter  together.  How  infinite  the  complexity 
of  the  individual  moral  problems  that  are  laid 
sorrowfully,  and  sometimes  savagely,  almost, 
before  the  Pastor's  eye. 

Most  people  who  individually  will  seek  your 
counsel  will  come  to  you  under  the  bewilder- 
ment or  paralysis  of  some  false  preconception. 

"My  little  summer  parish,"  said  one  of  you 
to  me,  "has  been  burned  over  and  over  with 
fanaticism  ! "  How  often  the  words  have  re- 
curred to  me !  How  the  fires  of  false  religion 
have   burnt   over   and    scorched    our   beautiful 


94  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

New  England !  Well !  You  will  deal  very 
patiently  with  these  preconceptions,  not  identi- 
fying the  real  intent  of  the  man  with  them. 
You  will  illumine  the  interview  with  some  unex- 
pected turn  or  touch.  Great  is  the  power  of  the 
unexpected,  and  all  thorough  mediation  is  full  of 
that  power.  Prediger  remarks,  **  Get  others  to 
talk ;  what  a  man  says  to  you  has  more  influence 
upon  him  than  all  you  can  say  to  him." 

The  Pastor  mediates  in  this  dim  tangle  of 
human  wrong  by  explaining  the  evil  part  of  the 
man  to  the  good  part  of  him,  and  claiming  the 
good  part  as  still  on  God's  side  in  the  fight,  not 
confusing,  in  the  crude,  common  way  of  average 
human  judgment,  the  whole  of  the  man  with 
his  fault.  The  man  hadn't  thought  of  that  dis- 
tinction, and  in  your  power  to  present  it  is  your 
first  hold  upon  him. 

Out  on  the  Southwestern  plains  the  air  is  so 

clear  that  the  Mexicans  have  a  proverb  that  you 

can  *'  see  into  day  after  to-morrow."    The  Pastor 

must  see  into   "day  after  to-morrow"   for   his 

man ;  and  you  will  not  forget  to  grace  the  talk 

with 

"  Some  touch  of  Nature's  genial  glow,  " 

to  quote  another  phrase  of  the  great  Sir  Walter. 
The   Pastor    studies    human   nature,    as    he 


THE   PASTOR   AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR     95 

studies  his  Bible.  He  is  sedulous  of  the 
"  higher  criticism  "  of  men*s  lives,  and  he  is 
not  content  with  mere  driftwood  knowledge 
either.  He  collates  his  observations  of  human 
nature,  writes  them  down,  and  tries  to  get  at 
a  definite  group  of  working  principles  and 
maxims.  So  he  can  recognize  the  wrong  in  a 
man  and  yet  keep  on  caring  for  him,  not 
merely  as  an  object  of  pity — ^men  resent  that 
and  ought  to — ^but  as  still  his  Father's  child, 
and  susceptible  of  rescue.  You  can  say  almost 
anything  to  a  man  if  you  make  it  evident  that 
you  say  it  because  you  honor  what  is  good 
in  him  and  that  your  anxiety  for  him  is  not  a 
professional  pose.  In  the  City  of  Brussels  the 
Socialists  have  erected  a  People's  Palace.  In 
one  of  the  halls,  behind  a  screen,  is  frescoed 
upon  the  wall  the  figure  of  Jesus  Christ.  So 
in  many  a  worldly  mind,  screened  even  from 
his  own  consciousness,  is  the  similitude  of 
Christian  ideals.  The  Niagara  of  nineteen 
Christian  centuries  has  not  for  nothing  poured 
itself  into  and  upon  the  modem  mind. 

But  just  one  word  here  as  to  these  personal 
interviews: — ^better  be  luminous  than  volum- 
inous ! 

Now  this  sense  of  the  moral  dualism  in  a 


96  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

man  and  of  the  duty  and  privilege  of  medi- 
ation between  the  two  selves  of  him  gives  to 
the  Pastor  a  curious  spiritual  daring,  an  in- 
dependent and  good-humored  fearlessness  in 
dealing  with  men  in  the  wish  to  explain  them 
to  themselves  and  to  segregate  the  good  from 
the  evil.  *  You  can't  make  me  anything  other 
than  your  brother/  Christ's  minister  says  to 
every  man;  *and  I  will  show  you  why.' 

Then  the  explanation  of  Christ  to  the  man 
follows  naturally.  The  Pastor  more  than 
preaches ;  he  would  incarnate  something  of  his 
Master's  spirit  and  attitude;  he  interprets 
Christ  through  his  own  lit  and  tender  per- 
sonality, playing  upon  and  in  sympathy  with 
the  good  half  of  the  man  he  is  talking  to. 

And  thus  with  reference  to  all  the  innum- 
erable moral  problems  in  individual  lives 
which  the  confessions  and  questions  of  his 
parishioners  will  bring  to  him.  The  Pastoral 
mood  is  not  only  intelligently  responsive  and 
humanly  sympathetic,  but  it  is  also  that  of  a 
spiritual  priesthood  in  Christ's  name.  The 
Pastor  is  Christ's  own  under-shepherd  directly 
at  work,  his  own  nature  roused  and  playing 
free,  out  towards  his  parishioner. 

Robert  Browning,  who  of  all  modern  poets 


THE   PASTOR   AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR     97 

comes  closest  to  the  Pastor,  in  depicting  the 
moral  scenery  of  human  life,  has  in  hia 
"  Saul  "  presented  one  of  the  lordliest  pictures 
in  English  literature  of  the  truly  pastoral 
ministry,  as  the  young  shepherd-singer  deals 
with  the  dark  despair  of  the  great  chieftain, 
as  he  hangs  "  drear,  and  stark,  blind  and 
dumb."  That  "black  midtenfs  silence"  is  the 
similitude  of  many  a  human  heart.  And  the 
wonderful,  varying,  upward  curve  of  the  harp- 
ist's melodies,  ranging  from  rural  trolls  to  the 
sublimest  religious  adjuration  and  prophecy 
— is  the  strangely  complete  and  eloquent  pro^ 
totype  of  the  Christian  Pastor's  many-toned 
plea.  Even  that  sinewy  and  sunny  line,  which 
gives  the  dominant  key-note  of  the  entire 
poem: 

"  How  good  is  man's  life — the  mere  living," 

is  not  unaptly  paraphrased  by  our  answering 
cry :  How  good  is  the  Pastor's  life — the  mere 
loving. 

With  his  own  mental  windows  ever  open 
towards  Christ,  he  realizes  the  Unseen;  he 
realizes  also  the  spiritual  background  of  the 
life  he  is  trying  to  help.  This  twofold  out- 
look   imparts    a    wonderful    steadiness    and 


98  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

blitheness  to   pastoral    service.     The   Pastor  is 

not  an  idealist  but  a  realist,  only  he   sees  the 

whole  of  the  man  in  Christ's  way : 

"He  looks  at  all  things  as  they  are, 
But  through  a  kind  of  glory," 

and  he  is  alive  to  the  tips  of  his  fingers  with 
an  active,  buoyant  friendliness  which  interprets 
to  the  man  his  own  problem  and  rouses  the 
good  in  him  to  fight  the  evil. 

THE    HOME 

Then  the  home  !  Ah  !  the  home.  Hats  off 
again,  gentlemen !  Every  home  possesses  for 
the  Christian  Pastor  something  of  the  sacred- 
ness  which  for  Jesus  hovered  about  that  home 
in  Bethany. 
>  In  the  previous  lecture  we  have  spoken  of 
the  pastor  as  the  family  comrade  and  coun- 
j  sellor.  Let  me  add  a  word  here  as  to  his  more 
;  distinctively  religious  office  in  the  home.  Here 
also  he  must  mediate,  between  one  home  and 
another  perhaps  ;  or  in  the  home  itself,  avoiding 
intrusion,  he  must  deftly  mend  the  break  be- 
tween different  factors  and  currents  in  the  family 
life.  He  is  the  interpreter  between  the  home 
as  it  is  and  the  same  home  as  it  might  be, 
should  it  realize  its  own  latent  possibilities.  In 
the  family  interview  his  motto  is : 


THE    PASTOR    AS    SPIRITUAL    SPONSOR      99 

"  Fear  not  to  touch  the  best, 
The  truth  shall  be  thy  warrant."  * 

"All  these  matters  of  pastoral  service  seem 
vague  to  me !  "  said  one  of  you  to  me.  They 
will  not  seem  vague  when  you  get  to  them, 
dear  brother,  if  you  make  your  own  soul  so 
nobly  fraternal  that  it  becomes,  perforce, 
mediatorial  in  the  true  sense.  And  you  can 
form  no  idea  beforehand  of  the  solemn  and 
gentle  joy  of  it  all. 

Ah,  gentlemen,  let  us  pray  God  that  we  may 
have  the  right  mood  at  the  threshold  of 
homes,  delicate,  reverent,  with  a  grain  of 
humor  and  a  pound  of  cheer,  remembering 
ere  the  door  opens,  the  unseen  shapes  of  joy 
or  sorrow  which  may  be  waiting  within. 

Have  you  a  voice,  a  look,  for  the  weeping 
ones  in  the  dim,  chill  room  where  the  living 
has  just  become  the  dead?  Yes,  if  you  are 
Christ's  man,  you  have;  not  otherwise.  And 
Christ's  man,  while  he  lingers  long  at  Cal- 
vary, does  not  stop  there;  he  goes  on  with 
Christ  to  the  Resurrection. 

Here,  too,  your  office  is  to  mediate,  i.  e.,  to 
interpret  the  unseen  in  the  terms  of  the  seen 

*  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 


100  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

r  — ^to  help  the  sad  eyes  to  see  what  Christ  gives 
you  to  see.  They  must  often  see  through 
your  eyes  if  they  are  to  see  at  all. 

And  aside  from  these  more  acute  chal- 
lenges, your  spiritual  sponsorship  will  be 
called  upon  in  reference  to  the  common  run  of 
home  questions  all  the  time.  How  many  a 
misunderstanding  is  to  be  set  right!  This 
young  fellow,  caught  in  a  business  snarl,  when 
the  case  involves  more  folly  than  fault,  is  not 
only  to  be  helped  out,  but  the  moment  is  to 
be  seized  upon  instantly,  tactfully,  and  availed 
of  to  swing  the  young  life  towards  its  God. 
This  girl  is  to  be  sent  on  her  way  to  college 
rejoicing,  but  also  resolute  for  Christian  serv- 
ice!. Here  an  inevitable  burden  is  to  be  set 
a  little  more  easily  on  the  galled  but  patient 
shoulders;  there  a  rift  of  Christ's  sunshine 
sent  across  the  invalid's  room;  yonder  an  old 
saw  or  song  made  to  tinkle  pleasantly  again 
in  the  dulled  year  of  age. 

How  can  a  man  do  it  all?  He  cannot,  ex- 
cept as  he  is  a  medium  for  the  exquisite  medi- 
ation of  the  many-toned  Christ.  You  will  be 
careful  also  not  to  trench  upon  the  field  better 
occupied  by  other  advisers.     Be  sensible,  or 


THE   PASTOR   AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR    loi 

else  don't  try  to  be  saintly.  Don't  make  a  fool 
of  yourself  by  stealing  the  doctor's  job  or  the 
lawyer's,  or  the  business  man's.  They  can 
give  better  counsel  than  we  can  in  their  own 
fields. 

^  What  then  is  your  office?  It  is  to  bring  a 
kind  of  Resurrection  Morning  into  evening  all 
the  time,  comradeship  into  struggle,  rescue 
into  failure,  in  a  word  bring  Christ  into  the 
home  life.  Is  not  all  this  work  in  some  true 
sense  mediatorial  ? 

THE    COMMUNITY 

Then,  last  of  all,  and  following  inevitably 
upon  the  individual  and  the  family  sponsorship 
comes  the  Pastor's  office  as  mediator  in  the 
parish,  and  in  the  community  at  large.  Here 
we  instantly  feel  the  hot  breath  of  the  new  age. 
The  age  gasps  for  adequate  mediation. 

What  a  rocking  time  !  ''  A  conflict  of  meth- 
ods," says  Sabatier,  'Ms  a  graver  matter  than  a 
quarrel  between  doctrines." 

What  is  upon  us  now  is  a  conflict  of  meth- 
ods, each  method  represented  by  a  class  rather 
than  by  a  man.  So  furious  is  the  current  that 
we  have  a  meUe  of  groups.  I  make  no  at- 
tempt at  novel  or  recondite  analysis  of  these 


102  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

social  phenomena,  but  the  broad,  patent  facts 
of  the  situation  constitute  such  a  challenge  as 
never  met  Christian  minister  before. 

The  age  is  full  of  the  detonations  of  class 
hostility.  Prejudice,  jealousy  are  not  indu- 
rated, half-ossified,  as  of  old ;  but  are  breaking 
out  into  overt  and  acute  (Conflicts,  where 
"  ignorant  armies  clash,"  to  recall  Arnold's 
phrase,  in  the  midst  of  the  dust  and  smoke  of 
a  kind  of  economic  chaos. 

What  is  needed?  Mediation,  mediation,  on 
the  part  of  some  one  so  plainly  disinterested, 
so  fair  and  fraternal  and  good-humoredly 
brave,  that  men  can't  help  liking  him  and 
trusting  him — a  Christian  minister  in  short, 
v^ho,  first  a  comrade  with  men,  can  in  Christ's 
spirit  be  mediator  and  peacemaker  among 
men. 

Who  else  can  so  well  explain  men  to  men  and 
"  keep  friends  "  with  all  ?  This  gives  glory 
even  to  "  preaching  in  a  sawmill,"  as  one  of 
you  told  me  he  was  privileged  to  do. 

Here  opens  before  us  in  its  new  and  acute 
phases  what  Professor  Ely  used  to  call  the 
"  effort  of  men  to  live  the  life  of  men."  One 
of  these  modern  issues  is  the  "Propaganda 
of  Socialism  '* — ^to  employ  the  epithet  of  Labor 


THE   PASTOR   AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR    103 

Commissioner  Charles  P.  Neill.  American 
Society  to-day  is  a  vast  and  tumultuous  sea 
of  social  conflict,  a  congeries  of  whirlpools, 
where  precedent  meets  experiment,  as  when  at 
the  "  Falls  of  St.  John,"  the  mighty  downrush 
of  the  river  meets  the  still  more  mighty  inrush 
of  the  tide. 

What  an  hour  to  live  in,  gentlemen!  Peril 
and  opportunity  come  in  on  the  same  flood.  In 
this  very  social  unrest  is  the  potency  of  social 
regeneration.  What  we  are  awaking  to  is 
what  Dr.  Stelzle  terms  the  "  economic  inter- 
pretation of  history."  Changes,  realignments 
vast  and  vital  are  in  rapid  progress.  The 
balance  of  our  population  and  power  is  becom- 
ing urban.  Industry  is  everywhere  organized. 
Not  less  than  one  hundred  and  twenty  inter- 
national organizations  are  affiliated  with  the 
"  American  Federation  of  Labor."  Twenty-five 
million  socialists  in  the  civilized  world  are  bent 
upon  a  revolutionary  propaganda.  There  are 
fifty  socialist  periodicals  in  the  United  States 
alone.  Again  we  ask,  what  is  needed  ?  And 
again  we  instantly  answer, — intelligent  and  loving 
mediation  more  than  anything  else,  so  securing 
mutual  understanding  and  co-operation.   But  who 


104  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

shall  thus  mediate  ?  Who  if  not  the  Christian 
Pastor  ? 

The  priest  of  God  now  must  be  a  practical 
expert  in  promoting  a  better  harmony  of 
social  movement  in  the  community. 

The  Pastor  is  the  one  man  in  town  who,  by 
virtue  of  the  associations  of  his  calling,  and 
especially  by  virtue  of  whatever  pure  noble- 
ness of  soul  he  possesses  and  the  high,  fine 
style  of  his  manhood,  can  bridge  these  chasms 
between  classes  and  so  warrant  on  his  own 
that  best  epitaph  on  any  man's  grave.  The 
man  who  helped  to  make  men  one. 

,You  ask,  "  Who  in  our  profession  is  trying 
to  do  this  sort  of  thing?  ''  Who?  Why,  such 
men  as  (to  mention  only  two  of  whose  work 
I  personally  know)  Ozora  S.  Davis,  late  of 
New  Britain,  Conn.,  now  President  of  Chi- 
cago Theological  Seminary,  and  Charles  R. 
Brown,  of  Oakland,  Cal.  They  not  only  try 
to  do  it,  but  they  do  it. 

Davis  has  toiled  to  master  four  languages 
besides  his  own,  in  order  to  speak  to  the  for- 
eign-born operatives  in  the  New  Britain  mills. 

Brown  of  Oakland  has  gone  into  the  La- 
bor Unions  and  stood  fearlessly  forth  for  the 
fraternity  of  the  Church  with  all  men,  high 


THE   PASTOR    AS   SPIRITUAL   SPONSOR    105 

and  low,  and  all  men  high  and  low,  in  Cali- 
fornia, love  and  honor  him  for  doing  it. 

That  sentence  of  Lessing,  though  one-sided, 
is  suggestive :  "  The  Christian  Religion  has 
been  tried  for  centuries.  The  Religion  of 
Christ  remains  yet  to  be  tried." 

So  we  may  say  that  the  Pastorate  of  Christ, 
charged  with  His  spiritual  democracy  and 
beautiful  with  His  spiritual  mediation,  is  yet 
to  be  brought  to  bear  fully  upon  the  social 
confusions  of  our  time. 

For  the  Pastor's  function  is  not  limited  by 
his  Church  walls.  A  splendid  breadth  of  light 
falls  upon  the  modern  Pastor  in  the  sense  that 
he  belongs  to  the  community  through  his 
Church.  He  is  every  man's  man  in  the  Mas- 
ter's name. 

So  it  is  that  the  Pastor,  tuned  to  the  very 
mind  of  his  Lord,  and  having  brought  all  men 
nearer  together,  can  fitly  stand  at  the  Table 
of  the  Holy  Communion,  declaring  the  Mes- 
sage of  the  Cross,  and  the  assurance  of  the 
pardoning  grace  of  God. 

One  of  you  asked  me  this  question,  and  it 
hits  the  eye  of  its  target, — I  quote  verbatim : 
"Which  is  the  better,  to  devote  one's  self 
to  making  fine  sermons  for  the  edification  of 


io6  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

a  few  saints,  or  to  get  out,  even  at  some  sac- 
rifice of  pulpit  preciseness,  and  try  to  reach 
outsiders  with  the  simple  Message  of  Salva- 
tion?" 

From  the  pastoral  standpoint,  one  doesn't 
hesitate  five  seconds  for  an  answer.  Which 
is  better,  carefully  to  fodder  one  prudent,  self- 
satisfied  sheep,  or  pull  ninety-nine  heedless 
lambs  out  of  the  ditch?  And  yet  the  alter- 
native which  the  question  proposes  does  not 
really  obtain,  for  that  "  simple  Gospel  mes- 
sage ''  which  you  have  in  mind  is  really  bet- 
ter preaching,  even  intellectually  considered, 
than  is  your  labored  academic  essay. 

Sylvester  Home's  great  Church  in  London 
bears  this  motto,  "No  quest,  no  conquest." 
The  logic  of  the  view  of  the  pastorate  pre- 
sented to-day  makes  the  Pastor  a  broad,  live, 
many-sided  man.  He  is  the  Pastor,  not  merely 
of  the  Church,  but  of  the  community.  The 
exclusive,  seclusive  theory  of  the  pastorate  is 
the  worst  possible  for  the  saints  themselves. 

The  line  that  separates  the  Church  from  the 
general  public  is  partly  arbitrary  and  illusory, 
the  relic  of  false  standards.  Christ's  man  is 
for  men,  wherever  he  finds  them.     Some  are 


THE   PASTOR   AS   SPIRITUAL    SPONSOR    107 

out  of  the  Church  that  ought  to  be  in;  some 
possibly  are  in  that  ought  to  be  out. 

My  friend,  Bishop  Leonard  of  Ohio,  told 
me  this  story:  He  said  he  sent  a  young  cu- 
rate, blazing  with  zeal  and  ready  to  tackle 
anything,  to  one  of  the  hardest,  toughest^ 
little,  side-tracked  parishes  near  the  southern 
border  of  the  State.  After  a  time,  back  came 
the  curate  to  report. 

"Well,"  said  Bishop  Leonard,  "how  many 
new  members  have  you  got  into  the  Church  ?  " 

"Bishop,  not  a  one,"  was  the  answer;  "but, 
by  the  grace  of  God,  I've  nearly  cleaned  out  all 
the  old  members f 

The  best  way  to  cultivate  the  saints  is  to 
make  them  go  out  with  you,  to  seek  and  save 
the  lost. 

Ah,  men,  that  is  what  you  are  for,  till  the 
sunset  gun,  to  get  hold  of  men,  anywhere  and 
everywhere,  explain  them  to  themselves,  medi- 
ate between  them,  create  among  them  the  basis 
for  an  intelligent  and  lofty  social  fellowship, 
help  them  to  understand  Christ,  and  so  bring 
them  back  to  God — to  the  Church,  do  I  say? 
Yes,  to  the  Church,  if  it  be  a  true  Church  of 
God,  for  the  Church  will  be,  as  it  was  at  the 


io8  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

beginning,  the  natural  and  necessary  social 
form  in  which  this  Christ-Life  among  men 
will  nucleate  itself  and  organize  itself  for 
action. 

What  some  of  these  forms  of  Church  action 
are  at  the  present  moment,  and  how  the  Pastor 
is  to  avail  himself  of  them  and  lead  them,  will 
be  the  subject  of  our  next  talk  together. 


LECTURE  IV 

THE   PASTOR  AS  PARISH  ORGAN- 
IZER  AND  LEADER 


THE  PASTOR  AS  PARISH  ORGANIZER 
AND  LEADER 

The  field  which,  in  rapid  and  informal 
fashion,  we  shall  traverse  to-day,  differs 
widely  from  its  predecessors  in  the  series.  Up 
to  this  moment  our  keynote  has  been  personal, 
possibly  even  introspective.  We  have  tried  to 
draw  near  to  that  wonderful  inner  flame  of 
the  pastoral  spirit  which,  like  the  fire  of  God 
in  the  burning  bush,  illumines  but  does  not 
consume!. 

We  have  described  this  peculiar  fire  of  our 
calling  by  its  essential  traits,  its  fundamental 
note  of  honor  for  men,  its  sympathy  with  men, 
its  genius  of  rescue,  its  passion  of  sponsorship 
in  Christ's  name.  We  have  thus  traced  a 
course  of  mental  development  which,  though 
attended  at  every  step  by  the  presence  and 
grace  of  the  spirit  of  Christ,  is  yet  normally 
psychological,  and  by  which  the  human  com- 
rade and  counsellor  becomes  also  Christ's  un- 
der-shepherd,  the  spiritual  guide  and  minister 
of  his  people,  fulfilling  the  supreme  offices  of 
a  mediator  in  our  distracting  time  between 
III 


112  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

rival  groups  and  classes  in  the  community,  and 
so  embodying  and  applying  something  of  the 
spirit  of  the  Great  Mediation  of  Christ. 

In  our  highly  complex  and  socialistic  era, 
however,  such  pastoral  work  in  the  commun- 
ity, in  order  to  be  effective,  must  avail  itself 
of  the  principle,  never  before  half  so  much 
emphasized  as  now,  of  social  organization. 
Thus  opens  before  us,  in  logical  order,  the 
function  of  the  pastor  as  the  parish  leader. 
We  shall  bear  in  mind  that  what  we  are  to 
discuss  is  not  the  field  of  parish  machinery  it- 
self,— ^that  would  require  a  volume — but  only 
the  pastor's  relation  to  it. 

A  most  notable  feature  of  church  life  in 
the  new  age  is  the  immense  expansion  of  the 
principle  of  subsidiary  organization  in  the  par- 
ish. This  is  in  response  to  the  dominance  of 
the  new  social  note  in  the  development  of  civ- 
ilization. This  new  note,  however,  is  more 
than  a  mere  rediscovery  of  the  social  idea  or 
a  fresh  insistence  upon  social  method.  It  is 
the  distinct  emergence  of  a  specific  theory  and 
style  of  social  organization,  namely,  that  of  the 
subdivision  of  classes  into  groups,  each  of  which 
shall  remain  semi-independent  and  yet  be  an 
organic  unit. 


PASTOR   AS   ORGANIZER    AND   LEADER     113 

What  Graham  Taylor  calls  "  the  irresistible 
tidal  movement  from  individualism  toward 
solidarity''  is  to  be  analyzed  by  reference  to 
this  further  principle  of  subdivisions  into 
group  independencies. 

As  to  this  heated  and  changeful  field,  gener- 
alizations are  easy  and  easily  fallacious ;  but  it 
seems  reasonable  to  suppose  that  we  are  ap- 
proaching that  new  conception  of  the  higher 
individuality  which,  to  employ  the  language 
of  Prof.  Shaler  of  Harvard,  "includes  lower 
individualities  in  itself." 

What  seems  to  be  coming  in  upon  us  in 
Church  and  State  is  not  only  a  new  sense  of 
the  significance  of  corporate  social  life,  with 
its  new  science  of  sociology  and  its  new  social 
economics,  but  also  the  further  discovery  and 
application  of  what  might  be  called — running 
a  clear  risk  of  pedantry— the  ganglionic  model 
of  social  structure,  as  in  physical  organisms, 
namely,  the  idea  of  organizing  by  classes  of 
more  or  less  independent  groups,  these  groups 
themselves  being  composed  of  more  or  less 
independent  clusters.  It  is  the  notion  of  the 
correlation  of  a  number  of  independent  social 
centres  of  subdivision.  The  new  energy  of  the 
social   unit  thus   developed,  together  with   the 


114  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

multiplication  of  wondrous  and  novel  agencies 
of  modern  science,  and  our  enlarged  facilities 
for  intercommunication,  is  remodeling  the 
face  of  our  civilization. 

To  this  style  of  remodeling  the  church  must 
conform.  In  all  the  great  convocations  held 
this  last  year,  denominational  and  interde- 
nominational, at  Edinburgh,  London,  Philadel- 
phia, this  fact  has  been  recognized.  Modern- 
ism is  not,  as  the  Vatican  conceives  it,  a  for- 
eigner, an  immigrant,  a  pert  invader  making 
a  descent  upon  the  age.  It  is  the  age  itself 
rebuilding  its  fabric  of  faith  under  more  ra- 
tional forms.  The  new  age  is  the  old  age, 
remelted  and  recast.  The  church  of  the  new 
age  is  the  church  of  the  old  age,  readapted. 
You  cannot  preach  to  an  express  train  unless 
you  are  on  the  train;  and  the  social  laws  that 
at  any  epoch  operate  throughout  the  entire 
community,  operate  not  less  in  the  church, 
which  is  integrated  in  that  community.  There 
is  also  abroad  everywhere  a  freshened  and  im- 
mensely enlarged  notion  of  the  breadth  of  the 
relations  in  which  the  church  may  legiti- 
mately stand,  as  affecting  the  community, 
especially  in  the  field  of  child-culture,  of  hu- 
manitarian relief,  and  in  the  work  of  home 


PASTOR   AS    ORGANIZER    AND   LEADER     115 

and  foreign  missions,  which  is  a  supreme  test 
of  the  true  Christian  spirit. 

The  relation  of  this  very  briefly  and  crudely 
stated  philosophy  of  modern  social  develop- 
ment to  our  line  of  thought  will  be  evident  as 
we  proceed.  On  the  whole,  this  organizing 
passion  of  the  age  (for  it  is  almost  such)  is  to 
be  welcomed  in  the  church.  The  life  of  the 
age  is  in  it,  the  providence  of  God  behind  it; 
it  carries  the  energy  and  the  prophecy  of  our 
time. 

But  a  very  vital  question  for  the  minister  is 
as  to  how  he  shall  hold  himself  in  relation  to  it. 
Shall  he  leave  this  field  of  departmental  ex- 
pansion to  others?  No.  Shall  he  surrender 
himself  to  its  mechanism,  making  its  technique 
of  foremost  importance?    Emphatically,  no. 

But  if  you  ask  me  exactly  how  to  steer  be- 
tween these  two  opposed  extremes,  I  have  only 
to  make  that  confession  of  inability  to  answer 
which  is  good  for  the  lecturer's  soul,  and 
which  may  remind  you  how  we  are  all  in  the 
same  boat  with  one  another  in  this  complex 
and  difficult  matter  of  handling  a  parish  to  the 
satisfaction  of  modern  men  as  well  as  to  the 
glory  of  God. 


iN'evertheless,  I  may  perhaps  hazard  a  f( 


:w 


ii6  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

hints,  drawn  out  of  my  own  pastoral  experi- 
ence, which  must  in  every  case  be  modified  to 
suit  the  individual  pastor's  own  idiosyncrasy 
and  the  circumstances  of  the  parish  in  which 
he  labors. 

The  general  ideal  of  parish  administration, 
and  especially  the  pastor's  relation  thereto, 
which  I  am  to  suggest,  will  be  characterized 
in  three  particulars  by  the  controlling  presence 
of  three  sentiments: 

1.  Personal  Considerateness. 

2.  Federative  Independence, 

3.  Social  Enthusiasm. 

PERSONAL    CONSIDERATENESS 

You,  gentlemen,  will  be  able  to  find  a  better 
brace  of  words  than  these  by  which  to  Express, 
in  a  single  epithet,  the  entire  quality  which  I 
have  in  mind.  It  is  that  note  of  personal  solic- 
itude, equity,  and  adaptation  which  is  im- 
parted to  all  the  organized  activity  of  the 
parish  by  the  pastor's  care  for  individuals, 
based  upon  his  knowledge  of  them,  his  re- 
spect and  love  for  them,  and  his  desire  for  their 
due  and  proper  freedom  of  individual  action. 

What  I  have  in  mind  is  the  opposite  of  the 
machine  tone  in  parish  life. 


PASTOR   AS   ORGANIZER    AND   LEADER    117 

Right  here,  on  the  threshold  of  the  dis- 
cussion, rises  before  us  the  truth  which  in 
this  whole  field  is  probably  the  most  vitally 
important  thing  to  remember,  namely,  that 
while  the  pastor  must  in  our  day  be  an  ad- 
ministrative leader,  he  is  not  to  shift  from 
his  normal  and  constant  pastoral  attitude,  in 
order  to  accomplish  this  administrative  work. 
True  parish  economics  presents  the  pastor  as 
organizing,  but  not  the  pastor  turning  himself 
into  something  else  for  the  sake  of  organizing. 

President  Tucker,  in  his  Yale  Lectures  on 
Preaching,  delivered  ten  years  ago,  remarks, 
with  that  union  of  rare  insight  and  finished 
expression  which  make  his  words  precious, 
"  There  is  a  strong,  though  subtle  influence  at 
work  toward  the  unmaking  of  the  preacher 
coming  up  out  of  the  social  situation."  So  we 
may  say  there  is  a  subtle  influence  at  work 
toward  the  unmaking  of  the  pastor  coming  up 
out  of  the  administrative  situation.  Against 
this  tendency  we  must  set  our  whole  force. 

The  very  key-note  of  wise  and  fine  parish 
direction  is  that  the  pastor  shall  not  cease  to 
be  a  pastor  in  order  to  be  a  parish  promoter; 
but  on  the  contrary,  shall  carry  the  rich,  full, 
devoted  tone  of  the  pastoral  spirit  into  every; 


ii8  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

fibre  and  filament  of  his  administrative  func- 
tions. Is  it  not  true,  however,  that  the  contrary 
is  often  assumed  by  young  ministers  ? 

Does  not  a  vague  idea  prevail,  accepted 
almost  without  challenge  in  certain  quarters, 
that  old-fashioned  pastoral  service  was  one 
thing,  with  its  individualistic  note  of  devotion, 
but  that  this  new,  insistent,  absorbing  business 
of  parish  organizing  is  quite  another  thing, 
more  quasi-secular  in  character,  as  though  the 
minister  must  needs  possess  no  less  than  three 
suits  of  professional  clothing,  one  to  wear  in 
pastoral  service  to  the  sick  and  afflicted ; 
another  —  a  kind  of  smart  spiritual  **  cutaway  " 

—  to  wear  as  a  man  of  affairs  in  running  the 
parish  machine;  while  a  third, —  cut,  Heaven 
only  knows  how,  but  different  from  the  others 

—  is  reserved  exclusively  for  the  pulpit !  Some- 
what in  this  vein  is  an  advertisement  which,  as 
I  am  credibly  informed,  a  senior  seminary  stu- 
dent inserted  in  the  columns  of  the  village 
paper:  "Wanted,  a  good  strong  horse  to  do 
the  work  of  a  country  pastor !  " 

All  this  is  away  from  the  deep  truth  of  our 
calling,  and  from  the  best  influence  of  church 
life  upon  our  civilization.  Such  professional 
segregation,  as  of  different  roles  in  the  ministry, 


PASTOR  AS  ORGANIZER  AND  LEADER  119 

is    fallacious    and    mischievous.       It    is    also 
needless. 

The  truth  is,  the  genius  of  fruitful  parish 
discipline  is  profoundly  permeated  by  the  pas- 
toral spirit.  The  pastor  first  of  all  considers 
individuals,  justly  and  gently.  He  adapts  the 
worker  to  the  task  and  adjusts  the  task  to  the 
worker.  The  clatter  of  cold  cog  wheels  is 
hateful  to  him.  '  If  nowhere  else  in  modern 
society,  then  all  the  more  in  the  church,'  he 
exclaims,  *  will  we,  by  Christ's  grace,  realize 
an  organic  life  characterized  by  that  spiritual 
freedom  and  elevation  which  spring  from  a 
delicate  and  just  regard  for  each  man's  per- 
sonality.' Now  it  is  precisely  this  note  of 
fraternal  sponsorship,  genial,  yet  charged  with 
religious  earnestness,  which  makes  church  life 
different  from  and  spiritually  superior  to 
other  forms  of  organization  in  our  modern 
society. 

In  other  words,  the  parish  machine  must 
not  be  a  machine.  It  must  have  soul,  and  its 
soul  must  be  love.  AH  the  numberless  subsid- 
iary departments  and  agencies  of  the  church 
propaganda  are  to  be  shot  through  with  a 
peculiar  temper  and  glow,  which  is  distinc- 
tively pastoral,  which  nobody  but  the  live  pas- 


120  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

tor,  who  is  never  anything  other  than  a  pastor, 
can  introduce  and  maintain.  In  its  peculiar 
considerateness,  its  accent  on  fellowship,  its 
loving  care  for  the  remnants,  fringes  and  fag- 
ends  of  the  social  life,  parish  organization 
should  be  the  equivalent,  in  corporate  and  or- 
ganic form,  of  those  qualities  which  we  have 
specified  as  denoting  the  pastor's  shepherding. 
In  a  word,  the  parochial  must  be  the  pastoral, 
in  Christ's  vital  and  humane  sense  of  that  title, 
and  if  it  is  not,  then,  while  there  may  be  a 
great  deal  of  social  stir  in  the  parish,  the  finest 
ends  of  the  church  life  will  drift  out  of  sight, 
both  unrecognized  and  unreached. 

Here,  therefore,  we  come  upon  what,  I  can- 
not help  thinking,  is  the  most  valuable  prac- 
tical rule  for  our  guidance  as  ministers,  in 
dealing  with  economic  and  administrative  de- 
tails :  Decide  them  in  the  pastoral  way,  that  is, 
get  into  the  full  glow  of  the  pastoral  firelight, 
and  then  decide  them.  Do  not  decide  them  in 
any  rattling  mill  of  mere  committee  confer- 
ence, or  in  the  icehouse  of  an  unwarmed 
church  study. 

For  example,  shall  we  permit  people,  whose 
hearts  are  warm,  but  who  have  little  educa- 
tion, to  teach  in  the  Sunday-school,  or  shall 


PASTOR   AS    ORGANIZER    AND   LEADER    121 

we  insist  upon  pedagogic  accomplishments? 
The  pastoral  spirit  would  answer:  accept  the 
former  class  as  teachers  to  start  with,  then 
work  toward  better  education  as  fast  as  you 
can. 

Here  is  another  question  which  you  will 
meet.  Shall  we  give  free  rein  to  everybody, 
especially  the  young  people,  to  multiply  social 
entertainments,  bazaars,  fairs,  secular  shows 
within  the  church  walls,  all  "  for  church  pur- 
poses," of  course;  or  shall  we  be  a  trifle  con- 
servative in  these  matters?  The  pastoral 
spirit,  in  the  sense  as  we  have  defined  it — the 
reembodiment  of  the  Master's  spirit — would 
reply:  take  the  conservative  line  to  start  with. 
But  when  you  have  run  up — ^not  so  high  either 
as  to  be  out  of  sight — the  great  flag  of  spiritual 
fidelity,  then  admit  beneath  it  all  social  ameni- 
ties and  enthusiasms  possible  which  are  not 
inconsistent  with  it.  The  easy  habit  of  dis- 
regard, or  even  forgetfulness,  in  attention  to 
secondary  enterprises,  of  the  great,  constant, 
spiritual  errand  of  the  church,  is  a  policy 
fraught  with  a  profound  peril;  it  loses  more 
than  it  gains,  and  in  the  long  run  will  cost 
the  church  the  loss  of  the  deeper  respect  and 
confidence  of  thinking  men. 


122  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

The  instances  are  legion  to  which  this  prin- 
ciple of  parish  judgment  applies.  Decide  the 
little  local  question  in  the  light  of  the  roused 
pastoral  sentiment,  i.  e.,  the  sentiment  at  once 
of  comrade  and  sponsor.  Yet  do  not  sit  up  so 
straight  even  as  Pastor  as  to  lean  backward. 
Keep  in  sympathy  with  your  vivacious  young 
people,  or  with  some  possibly  over-economical 
business  man,  even  when  you  oppose  them. 
Let  them  feel  that  you  understand  them,  and 
very  genially  and  patiently  explain  the  con- 
trary ground  to  them.  Very  possibly  they 
may  be  right  and  you  wrong. 

"  Would  you  admit  dancing  in  the  church  ?  " 
one  of  you  asked  me.  Yes,  if  I  would  in  the 
little  room  upstairs  at  home  where  my  mother 
goes  to  pray.  That,  I  think,  would  be  the 
Pastor's  answer.  There  is  a  fitness  in  things, 
and  the  common  sense  of  the  community,  if 
frankly  appealed  to,  respects  that  fitness.  Only 
you  must  learn  to  say  "  No  "  in  these  matters 
with  a  smile  that  means  genuine  kindliness, 
and  with  a  quick  tactful  suggestion  of  some- 
thing else  in  place  of  the  thing  forbidden,  that 
shall  be  attractive  and  yet  shall  preserve  the 
sense  of  moral  fitness. 


PASTOR   AS   ORGANIZER    AND   LEADER    123 

Sometimes  an  unexpected  turn  helps.  "  May 
we  have  a  little  game  in  the  church  parlor?  " 
was  asked  of  a  minister  friend  of  mine,  a  tact- 
ful man.  "  Certainly,"  he  answered.  "  And 
we'll  rehearse  some  songs  at  the  same  time. 
Then  the  next  day  we  will  all  rally  and  tramp 
out  two  miles  to  a  poor  little  hospital  on  the 
outskirts  of  the  town  and  sing  those  songs  to 
the  poor  fellows  lying  there  in  their  pain !  " 
And  the  scheme  went  through,  too.  But  the 
young  folks  didn't  want  to  play  that  game  in 
the  church  parlor  every  week ! 

Get  down  to  the  pastoral  undertone  in  your 
parish  economics.  The  Church  is  the  Church, 
not  a  trade-union,  nor  a  business  corporation, 
nor  a  social  club,  primarily,  though  in  a  sec- 
ondary sense  it  is  all  of  these.  It  is  a  human- 
rescue  brotherhood,  working  for  moral  and 
religious  ends.  Bring  Christ's  love-note  in. 
Parish  economics  is  not  mechanism.  It  is  the 
natural  fulfillment  of  Christ-like  outreach  for 
men,  appearing  in  modern  socially  organized 
forms. 

This  very  level  question  was  asked  by  one 
of  you :  "  Shall  a  minister  m  our  day  of  or- 
ganized  activities   concentrate    his  effort   on 


124  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

his  parish  machinery  and  let  domestic  parisH 
calHng  go  ?  *'  I  answer,  No.  Why  ?  Because 
that  wouldn't  be  pastoral.  The  home  inter- 
view is  what  will  most  help  the  minister  in- 
telligently and  kindly  to  guide  the  committees 
and  interject  the  line  considerateness  of  Christ 
into  the  methods  of  departments. 

Still,  in  this  matter  of  common  "  parish  call- 
ing "  we  must  remember  that  times  have 
changed.  New  demands  have  multiplied  and 
time  seems  shortened.  A  pastor  is  an  over- 
driven toiler,  preacher,  teacher,  leader, 
watcher  ovier  his  flock.  He  must  be  a  stern 
yet  tactful  economist  of  his  moments.  He  has 
no  time  for  garrulous  gadding  about  the  par- 
ish. A  parish  call  is  a  salutation,  not  a  con- 
ference, and,  as  a  rule,  ten  minutes  are  more 
to  the  purpose  than  sixty  for  such  salutation, 
unless  in  connection  with  some  definite  profes- 
sional errand. 

We  complain  of  parish  gossip.  Let  us 
see  to  it  that  we  are  not  gossips  ourselves, 
especially  in  committee  meetings.  The  habit 
of  indiscreet  garrulity  in  committee  meetings 
digs  many  pastoral  graves.  It  is  a  good  rule 
never  to  talk  to  one  person  in  the  parish  about 
another,  and  never  presume  upon  your  ex 


PASTOR   AS   ORGANIZER    AND   LEADER    125 

oiHcio  chairmanship  to  recite  personal  narra- 
tives. 

Gentlemen,  do  not  let  the  twentieth  century 
turn  you  into  that  curious  parochial  prodigy — ■ 
a  universal  committeeman,  a  polyglot  chair- 
man. Don't  try  to  be  captain  of  everything; 
and  when  you  are  captain,  don't  forget  that 
you  are  Christ's  under-shepherd  and  human- 
ity's servant  first  and  all  the  time.  Let  the 
deacons  moderate  some  of  the  meetings.  Oc- 
casionally have  the  sprightliest  deacon  do  it, 
if  you  think  the  very  term  "moderator"  is 
invidious  in  that  connection.  And,  by  the 
way,  have  some  sprightly  men  on  your  Dea- 
cons' Board.  That  is  a  part  of  the  modern 
era  in  church  enterprise. 

FEDERATIVE    INDEPENDENCE 

But  we  pass  to  the  second  feature  of  our 
parish  ideal,  which  will  perhaps  let  us  a  little 
further  into  the  social  philosophy  of  our  sub- 
ject. Closely  joined  with  the  spirit  of  con- 
siderate loving-kindness  which,  emanating 
from  the  pastor  himself,  should  pervade  all 
the  church  organizations,  is  another  quality — • 
the  quality  of  freedom,  a  concession  of  inde- 


126  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

pendence  to  official  associates  and  subordi- 
nates, based  upon  trust  in  them.  This  also  is 
a  direct  emanation  from  the  pastoral  attitude 
of  mind. 

"Ye,  brethren,  were  called  for  freedom; 
only  use  not  your  freedom  for  an  occasion  to 
the  flesh,  but  through  love  be  servants  one  to 
another."     (Gal.  5,  13). 

Here,  in  a  sentence,  St.  Paul  describes  the 
genius  of  church  organization  on  its  side  of 
liberty. 

In  order  to  measure  the  value  of  this  prin- 
ciple in  modern  church  life,  we  must  more 
carefully  recur  to  that  analysis  of  present  so- 
cial conditions  which  has  already  been  out- 
lined. 

Ezekiers  ancient  and  dazzling  vision  of  the 
beryl  wheels  is  fulfilled  in  an  age  such  as  this, 
which  is  characterized  by  the  impulse,  not 
merely  to  organize,  but  to  multiply  subsidiary 
organizations  within  organizations.  Perhaps 
the  most  distinctive  note  in  the  organizing  im- 
pulse of  to-day  is  that  it  so  loves  the  "  wheels 
in  the  middle  of  a  wheel."  It  is  a  very  demon 
of  federative  subdivision  which  is  upon  us ;  or 
rather  not  a  demon,  but  the  little  wizard  of 
social  efficiency.    Modern  power  is  largely  in 


PASTOR   AS   ORGANIZER    AND  LEADER    127 

the  ratio  of  the  subdivision  of  semi-inde- 
pendent agencies.  Now  the  logical  conse- 
quence of  this  must  be  an  ultimate  appeal 
either  to  a  very  rigid  mechanical  discipline,  or 
to  a  very  lofty  voluntary  fraternity,  as  the 
force  to  coordinate  and  harmonize  these  many 
subdivisions;  for  each  desires  to  maintain  a 
certain  independence. 

As  soon  as  you  get  fairly  started  in  prac- 
tical parish  development  you  will  be  at  your 
wits'  end  to  keep  track  of  your  "train  sec- 
tions" (or  keep  them  on  the  track,  for  that 
matter).  In  my  own  parish  organization,  I 
have  no  less  than  fourteen  presidents  of  things, 
besides  vice-presidents,  and  more  than  that 
number  of  subordinate  chairmen!  I  counted 
them  this  morning;  and  my  church  is  a  quiet 
family  tea-table  compared  with  the  infinite  in- 
stitutionalism  of  some  churches. 

I  do  not  deprecate  this  growing  multiplic- 
ity; I  welcome  it.  The  heart-throb  of  the 
age  insists  that  it  should  be  thus.  We  shall 
soon  have  an  office  of  some  sort  for  every  man, 
woman  and  child  in  the  church.  And  the 
people  like  it;  they  must  have  it.  They  work 
well  under  it;  they  won't  work  without  it; 
the  twentieth  century  forbids  them.    Labor  it- 


128  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

self  IS  welcome,  If  only  people  can  have  enough 
"  division  of  labor  " ;  and  everybody  finds  rea- 
son for  being  a  Dorcas,  who  can  only  be  sec- 
retary or  something  of  a  Dorcas  society. 

I  intend  no  slant  of  satire ;  but  pay  my  com- 
pliment to  the  spirit  of  the  age.  In  this  mi- 
nute subdivision  of  corporate  life,  in  this  multi- 
plication and  distribution  of  official  responsi- 
bility, is  a  hidden  dynamic  of  vast  and  hith- 
erto undeveloped  power.  Thirty  and  more 
separate  presidents  and  chairmen  in  one  church 
implies  an  unlocking  of  human  energy  little 
short  of  terrific!  Indeed,  right  here,  in  this 
ingearing  of  departments,  this  interplay  of 
groups,  each  group  an  organized  unit,  this  free 
union  of  legitimate  official  ambition,  with  un- 
limited organic  subdivision,  we  hear  the  very 
''chug  chug''  of  the  motor-car  of  the  modern 
parish  race. 

Under  these  circumstances,  two  theories  of 
parochial  administration  offer  themselves  for 
your  adoption:  the  one,  the  more  centralized 
and  autocratic;  the  other,  the  more  federated 
and  distributive.  In  the  former,  the  pastor 
is  not  only  the  nominal  but  the  actual  manager 
and  dictator  of  all  these  multiform  activities. 


PASTOR   AS   ORGANIZER    AND   LEADER    129 

His  word  is  law.  He  holds  all  the  strings  in 
his  hand.  He  rules— tactfully,  if  he  has  the 
grace— but  he  rules.  The  whole  parish  is  like 
a  great  army,  a  factory,  or  commercial  house, 
with  one  absolute  head,  from  which  all  depart- 
ments and  sub-departments  are  graded  down. 
The  amazingly  effective  "Salvation  Army" 
organization  is  a  supreme  instance  of  this  re- 
ligious autocracy.  What  it  lacks  is  freedom 
for  individual  development. 

The  other  parochial  method  is  that  of  fed- 
erated fraternalism,  in  which,  while  the  pastor 
is  at  the  head,  each  department  of  the  parish 
organization  is  treated  and  trusted  as  being  an 
entity  in  itself,  with  its  own  head— the  Sun- 
day-school, Senior,  Intermediate,  Primary, 
Kindergarten;  the  Mission  School;  the  Wom- 
an's Mission  Circle;  the  Men's  Club;  the 
Young  People's  Alliance;  the  Junior  Guilds, 
half  a  dozen  of  them,  all  and  each  regarded 
somewhat  as  "free  and  sovereign  states,"  in 
a  federal  union.  Here  freedom  is  maintained 
and  the  community  of  action  is  secured,  not 
so  much  by  official  discipline  as  by  a  common 
and  burning  spirit  of  religious  earnestness  and 
mutual  faith  and  honor  glowing  at  the  centre 


I30  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

of  the  parish  life,  which  spirit  it  is  the  business 
of  the  pastor  himself  to  cultivate  and  even 
embody. 

Now,  as  between  these  two  administrative 
theories  and  methods,  the  former,  the  central- 
ized and  autocratic,  is  probably  the  more  busi- 
nesslike, the  more  army-like,  the  more  effec- 
tive for  machine  ends,  the  better  agent  for 
mere  church  propagandism ;  and  the  more  re- 
cent drift  in  what  we  call  "  up  to  date  "  parish 
enterprise  is,  I  am  incHned  to  believe,  on  the 
whole,  tending  in  that  direction. 

But  I  seriously  question  whether  the  higher 
ends  of  personal  Christian  culture  and  a  fine- 
toned  Christian  civilization  are  reached  so 
nobly  as  by  the  federation  plan.  To  quote  a 
phrase  of  Edmund  Burke,  we  "pardon  some- 
thing to  the  spirit  of  liberty.'' 

Take  what  most  pastors  discover  to  be  a 
somewhat  "  burning "  question,  that  of  the 
choir,  for  instance.  There  is  considerable  rea- 
son to  believe  that  an  average  church  choir  can 
be  managed  best  on  the  federation  plan.  Min- 
isterial autocracy  is  usually  checked  at  the 
organ  loft.  One  instance  to  the  contrary  is, 
however,  reported  from  a  colored  church 
down  South,  where  the  minister,  having  suf- 


PASTOR   AS   ORGANIZER    AND   LEADER    131 

fered  many  things  for  many  days,  announced 
one  Sunday  morning,  "  De  choir  will  now 
sing  dat  beautiful  piece,  *"  We  ain't  got  long  to 
stay  heah/  after  which  dey  will  consider  dem- 
selves  discha'ged  and  will  file  out  quietly,  one 
by  one.  .We'se  gwine  to  hab  con'gational 
singin'  heahaftah  in  dis  yere  chu'ch." 

Nathaniel  Schmidt,  Professor  of  Semitic 
literature  at  Cornell  University,  in  his  elo- 
quent though  radical  book,  "The  Prophet  of 
Nazareth,"  published  three  years  ago,  remarks, 
"  A  greater  importance  is  given  in  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  to  the  perfecting  of  human  soci- 
ety than  to  the  future  of  the  individual."  This 
may  be  a  rather  one-sided  generalization,  but 
there  can  be  no  question  but  that  the  exhibi- 
tion of  free  and  voluntary  brotherhood,  in 
organized  action  in  the  church  of  Christ,  is 
now  and  is  to  be  our  finest  socially  educative 
force ;  but  in  order  for  this,  the  organic  affilia- 
tion must  be  voluntary  and  free.  As  Jesus 
said,  "  By  this  shall  all  men  know  that  ye  are 
my  disciples  if  ye  "  are  subservient  to  a  cen- 
tralized parish  administration  ?  No — "  if  ye 
have  love  one  to  another." 

If  Christian  churches  represented  an  ethical 
and  intellectual  level  no  higher  than  that  of 


132  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

the  masses  of  society  at  large,  autocracy,  let 
us  concede,  might  be  the  best  method  for  util- 
izing their  energies.  But  the  churches  arg 
composed  of  Christian  men  and  women,  i.  e., 
of  people  who,  in  the  free  exercise  of  educated 
reason  and  moral  purpose,  have  chosen  Christ, 
His  truth  as  their  law.  His  service  as  their 
joy.  Now,  among  such  people,  the  federative 
plan,  while  it  has  its  dangers,  has  also  its  im- 
mense advantages.  It  develops  personal  char- 
acter and  the  responsibility  of  free  initiative. 
It  promotes  mutual  respect  and  voluntary 
courtesy.  It  makes  Christian  courtesy  rather 
than  parish  red  tape  the  arbiter  of  differences 
between  departments.  It  makes  the  parish  a 
brotherhood  of  honor,  between  free  groups  of 
coordinated  workers,  "  stirred  up  with  high 
hopes  of  living  to  be  brave  men,"  to  use  a  su- 
perb phrase  of  Milton,  not  mere  cogs  in  parish 
wheels. 

In  a  word,  this  method  is  morally  educative 
rather  than  mechanically  coercive.  It  may  not 
"get  there,"  as  we  say,  quite  so  quick;  but 
we  get  more  when  we  do  "get  there."  I 
throw  in  my  vote,  therefore,  for  the  federative 
ideal  of  parish  administration. 

"  Tell  us,"  said  one  of  you  to  me,  "  when 


PASTOR   AS   ORGANIZER    AND  LEADER    133 

you  come,  what  has  been  your  own  experi- 
ence? Where  do  you  put  the  emphasis?" 
Well!  One  man's  experience  doesn't  count 
for  much,  but  it  is  the  best  he  has.  I  may  say, 
therefore,  perhaps  without  impropriety,  that 
in  the  course  of  my  thirty-five  years'  pastorate 
in  a  single  church,  I  have  had  the  amplest  pos- 
sible confirmation  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 
value  of  this  freer,  more  voluntary,  and,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  more  finely  fraternal  method. 

Now,  where  does  the  logic  of  all  this  couple 
on  with  our  general  scheme  of  thought?  At 
this  point,  namely,  that  the  genius  of  this  fed- 
erative method  is  preeminently  pastoral,  in  the 
sense  in  which  we  have  used  the  word  in  these 
lectures,  namely,  comrade-like  and  socially  me- 
diatorial. It  is  full  of  a  noble  fellowship  and 
equally  full  of  a  noble  freedom  trust.  The 
deliberate  habit  of  exercising  this  faith  in  your 
department  leaders,  daring  to  let  others  besides 
yourself  have  their  way  — (at  all  events  until 
they  discover  that  your  way  is  better)  this 
large,  brave,  free  trust,  I  say,  in  your  fellow 
Christian  workers,  is  the  direct  product  of,  and 
the  constant  incitement  to,  what  we  have  called 
the  pastoral  spirit  at  its  full  bloom. 

Indeed,  the  glory  of  the  federative  idea  in 


134  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

parish  economics  is  that  the  one  indispensable 
requisite  for  making  it  effective  is  precisely 
that  pervasive  spiritual  glow  throughout  the 
parish  which  it  is  the  first  business  of  Christ's 
pastor  to  maintain.  In  the  spirit  of  his  Mas- 
ter's grace,  he  substitutes  the  appeal  to  love 
and  honor  and  mutual  considerateness  for  the 
mere  discipline  of  arbitrary  command. 

In  fact,  the  alternative  is  sharp.  If  you 
are  really  comrade  and  mediator,  in  Christ's 
Name,  you  are  distinctly  not  autocrat.  "  Our- 
selves as  your  servants  for  Jesus'  sake,"  writes 
the  man  of  Tarsus,  even  to  that  little  mongrel 
and  quarrelsome  church  in  the  dissolute  Cor- 
inthian capital.  You  persuade,  not  command. 
You  appeal  to  loyalty,  not  issue  a  subpoena^ 
You  treat  your  parishioners  as  your  coordi- 
nates and  brothers.  You  "  go  before "  the 
sheep,  as  Jesus  said,  rather  than  drive  them. 

Time  fails  to  go  fully  into  the  social  ethics 
that  lies  behind  all  this ;  but  I  suspect  that  the 
essential  dignity  and  value  of  all  Protestant 
voluntaryism  is  in  that  :ethic.  And  if  the 
minister  adopts  this  as  his  parish  method  and 
ideal ;  if,  taking  the  risk,  he  dares  to  trust  his 
parishioners  as  Christ  trusts  him  and  them ;  if 
he  organizes  his  whole  church  in  this  spirit, 


PASTOR    AS    ORGANIZER    AND    LEADER     135 

giving  to  each  sub-department  a  certain  un- 
challenged freedom  of  action  in  its  own 
sphere,  he  will  find  that  the  nobler  Christian 
enthusiasm  in  himself,  and  in  all  the  church, 
will  be  deepened  and  purified.  The  splendid 
spiritual  fire  at  the  center  of  the  parish  life 
will  keep  all  the  departments,  though  free,  yet 
Spiritually  one,  rather  than  mechanically  allied. 


SOCIAL  ENTHUSIASM 

Fellowship,  Freedom,  Cheer!  This  is  the 
order  of  the  parish  psychology.  Besides  the 
qualities  of  considerateness  and  trustfulness 
which  characterize  the  true  pastor's  handling 
of  church  activities  is  one  quality  more,  also 
distinctly  pastoral,  which,  like  the  flame  at  the 
finial,  brings  the  others  to  completeness  and 
illumines  the  entire  field  of  pastoral  adminis- 
tration. It  is  the  quality  of  spiritual  cheer. 
It  is  that  cheer  of  the  invulnerable  and  im- 
mortal hope  which,  as  you  may  recall,  we  spec- 
ified in  our  opening  lecture  as  the  last  of  our 
"five  traits"  of  the  pastoral  spirit. 

"We  are  saved  by  hope."  The  Christian 
pastorate  is  saved  by  hope.  Buoyancy  in  lead- 
ership is  what  I  mean.     This  is  the  pastor's 


136  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

final  contribution  to  organized  church  activity 
and  is  almost  the  most  precious  of  all.  It  is 
that  quality  which  is  imparted  to  Christian 
service  by  the  blending  of  reason  and  faith  in 
the  sense  of  the  attainableness  of  the  end 
sought.  This  end  is  the  moral  rescue  and  spir- 
itual rehabilita.tion  of  men.  That  such  re- 
newal is  practically  possible  is  with  the  Chris- 
tian minister  a  first  article  of  his  faith.  It  is 
both  a  rational  conviction  and  a  kindling 
vision ;  and  this  cheer  of  the  invulnerable  hope, 
drawn  from  the  depths  of  his  belief  in  the  law 
and  the  love  of  the  world,  he  imparts  to  all  the 
working  of  his  parish  forces.  To  recall 
.Wordsworth's  line, 


A  man  he  seemed  of  cheerful  yesterdays 
And  confident  to-morrows." 


The  significance  of  this  quality  of  cheer 
shines  out  when  we  remember  that  it  is  pre- 
cisely the  one  so  often  lacking  in  the  working 
of  our  secular  social  machinery.  For  by  cheer 
I  do  not  mean  stir  or  excitement  or  even  ar- 
dor. Social  mechanism  in  non-Christian  soci- 
eties may  furnish  all  these.  I  mean  a  steady 
hopefulness  which  is  enthusiasm   and  some- 


PASTOR   AS   ORGANIZER   AND   LEADER    137 

thing  more ;  a  kind  of  certainty  of  result  which 
seems  to  echo  the  purpose  of  the  Infinite. 

"  Some  novel  power 
Sprang  up  forever  at  a  touch, 
And  hope  could  never  hope  too  much 
In  watching  thee  from  hour  to  hour."  * 

So  the  parish  watches  the  pastor.  This 
pecuHar  cheer  is  perhaps  the  reverberation,  in 
the  pastoral  temper,  and  through  the  pastor 
in  all  the  church  life,  of  the  very  "joy"  of 
Christ,  which  seems  closely  associated  with 
His  underlying  certainty  that  His  work 
would  avail.  "These  things  have  I  spoken 
unto  you,  that  my  joy  may  be  in  you." 

The  modern  evolutionist  should  be  a  man  of 
hope,  in  his  sense  of  the  reign  of  law,  and  of 
the  sure  upward  progress  of  life.  But  this  in- 
tellectualism,  left  to  itself,  is  liable,  as  you 
know,  to  fits  of  reaction  and  depression  and 
is  even  sometimes  turned  right  around,  as  in 
the  philosophy  of  Schopenhauer,  into  a  sci- 
ence of  pessimism.  But  the  Christian  pastor 
laughs  pessimism  out  of  court.  He  works  in 
a  great  surge  of  anticipative  assurance.  In  his 
view  pessimism  is  the  snarl  of  a  one-eyed  dog, 
*  Tennyson,  In  Meinoriam. 


138  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

or  in  more  respectful  phrase,  it  is  a  one-sided 
judgment  based  upon  a  partial  view  of  the 
facts.  You  reply,  Optimism  also  is  a  deduc- 
tion from  only  half  the  facts.  No !  The  major 
portion  of  the  facts  of  life,  as  the  evolutionist 
and  the  Christian  see  them,  crowd  over  upon 
the  brighter  side.  A  day  and  a  night  together 
make  not  one  night  but  one  day.  Things  are 
not  only  straining,  but  straining  upward. 

But  the  pastoral  temper,  besides  being  thus 
rationally  hopeful,  glows  also  with  the  specific 
Christian  gladness — I  had  almost  said  glee— 
and  good  reason  why.  It  is  alive  with  social 
kindliness.  Its  Christmas  bells  ring  all  the 
year.  It  palpitates  with  a  sense  of  Christ — 
the  Christ  not  only  of  Gennesaret,  but  of  the 
Resurrection — Christ  living  and  mighty  and 
instantly  present,  though  unseen,  in  the  plen- 
itude of  His  beautiful  power  for  moral  re- 
newal everywhere. 

In  this  mood,  rational  assurance  and  spir- 
itual exhilaration  coalesce  and  produce  in  their 
convergence  pastoral  cheer — a  kind  of  deep 
gaiety,  constant,  permanent,  indestructible. 
This  gaiety,  or  buoyancy  of  leadership,  is  the 
"  one  touch  more "  which  church  organiza- 
tions need  for  felicitous  action.     Without  it 


PASTOR   AS    ORGANIZER    AND   LEADER    139 

they  grind  or  clatter  or  are  cold.  Like  the 
firelight  in  a  "  living-room "  or  oil  upon  the 
watch  wheel,  this  buoyant  temper  enables  the 
church  happily  and  harmoniously  to  perform 
its  duty  in  every  department. 

Let  me  quote  again  from  yourselves :  "  My 
parish  vibrates  between  levity  and  lethargy," 
said  one  of  you,  speaking  of  his  summer  field. 
Well !  better  that  vibration  than  no  movement 
at  all.  Get  right  into  the  middle  of  the  vibra- 
tion and  inoculate  it  with  true  pastoral  buoy- 
ancy. A  cork  is  a  little  fellow,  but  all  Niag- 
ara cannot  drown  it. 

"  How  to  reach  the  men  of  the  parish  ? '' 
was  another  of  your  questions — a  very  per- 
emptory one,  a  very  difhcult  one.  I  think 
perhaps  the  best  answer  is  suggested  right  at 
this  point,  and  it  is  this:  cheerful  initiative  in 
developing  local  parish  organization.  This  is 
the  way  to  reach  men.  Men  nowadays  like  to 
organize,  if  they  can  see  something  good  and 
glad  and  practically  accessible  to  organize  for. 
They  had  rather  serve  on  a  committee  than 
listen  to  preaching;  and  who  can  challenge 
their  taste? 

Then,  too,  this  cheer,  good-humored  and 
genial,  with  its  hint  of  far-away  music,  and 


140  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

with  a  touch  upon  it  of  the  graceful  gracious- 
ness  of  Christ  Himself,  is  just  what  is  neces- 
sary to  help  the  pastor  to  perform,  tactfully 
and  happily,  his  own  administrative  duty.  He 
practices  Christ's  art  of  the  gentle  justice. 

Fretting  business  it  is  to  be  an  omnipresent 
chairman!  You  have  observed  that  it  is  al- 
ways at  the  hub  where  the  wheel  creaks  and 
binds.  Chronic  anxiety,  if  not  irritation,  is 
often  the  synonym  of  administrative  responsi- 
bility. But  clothed  with  cheer,  as  the  pastor  is 
or  may  be,  proud  and  happy,  as  well  as  vigi- 
lant and  brave,  full  of  a  certain  self-maintained 
animation,  the  pastor  meets  all  the  irritating 
wear  and  tear,  even  of  committee  meetings, 
with  a  curious  blitheness.  Of  course,  the  saints 
won't  always  agree  with  him, — they  wouldn't 
be  real  saints  if  they  did — for  he  will  not  al- 
ways be  in  the  right  and  ought  not  always  to 
be  agreed  with.  However,  whether  the  wind 
blows  high  or  blows  low,  a  pastor  becomes  a 
cheerful  expert  in  taking  criticism.  Unless 
you  can  take  a  blow  as  a  compliment — side 
with  others  against  yourself — you  haven't 
learned  the  rudiments  of  the  Christian  pas- 
torate. 


PASTOR  AS  ORGANIZER  AND  LEADER     141 

Considerateness,  Trustfulness,  Hopefulness , 
these  three  then,  in  their  combination,  repre- 
sent, as  it  appears  to  me,  the  pastoral  spirit  in 
the  field  of  parish  leadership,  maintaining,  in 
all  organized  activities,  the  warmth  of  per- 
sonal attention,  the  freedom  of  feder- 
ated independence,  the  immortal  cheer  of 
social  Christian  enthusiasm.  So  we  carry  on 
the  essence  of  the  fraternal  and  socially  media- 
torial genius  of  our  calling.  We  surrender 
nothing,  either  of  the  fine  comradeship  or  of 
the  noble  priesthood,  to  any  supposed  eco- 
nomic necessity,  in  conducting  parish  adminis- 
tration. On  the  contrary,  these  qualities,  em- 
bodied in  the  pastor  and  constantly  present  in 
his  church  management,  impart  to  these  varied 
activities  themselves  the  beauty  and  power  of 
a  true  ecclesia  of  God — "many  members,  yet 
one  body" — a  brotherhood  of  free  men  in 
Christ  Jesus,  availing  itself  of  every  modern 
facility,  and  organized  in  the  full  play  of  the 
modern  spirit,  yet  devoted  to  a  supreme  spir- 
itual errand,  and  illustrating  in  the  commun- 
ity the  social  ideals  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ. 

Considerateness,  Trustfulness,  and  Hopeful- 
ness !    Why  should  I  not  adopt  the  shorter  and 


142  THE   CHRISTIAN   PASTOR 

more  familiar  words,  which  better  render  the 
immortal  Greek  of  St.  Paul — ^love,  faith,  hope ; 
and,  gentlemen,  now  as  ever,  and  in  the  ad- 
ministrative department  of  the  pastorate  not 
less  than  in  any  other,  "  the  greatest  of  these 
is  love." 


THE   PASTOR   AS    PREACHER 


THE   PASTOR   AS    PREACHER 

In  the  course  of  our  rapid  review  of  certain 
aspects  of  the  pastor's  relation  to  his  work  in 
our  modern  time,  we  reach  to-day  a  closing* 
glance  upon  what  is  commonly  regarded  as  the 
crowning  function  of  the  ministry.  Our  sub- 
ject is  The  Pastor  as  Preacher. 

Dr.  Stalker,  of  Glasgow,  at  the  outset  of 
his  Yale  Lectures  of  1891,  expresses  the  Prot- 
estant consensus  as  to  the  place  of  preaching 
in  the  ministerial  vocation,  when  he  exclaims, 
"  Preaching  is  the  central  thing  in  our  work." 
Yet,  later  on  in  the  same  lectures,  he  remarks, 
"  Gentlemen,  I  believe  that  almost  any 
preacher,  on  reviewing  a  ministry  of  any  con- 
siderable duration,  would  confess  that  his 
great  mistake  had  been  the  neglect  of  indi- 
viduals." 

Are  these  two  sentiments  mutually  exclu- 
sive, or  is  there  not  a  conception  of  the  pastor 
in  the  pulpit  which  may  unite  them?  You, 
who  have  done  me  the  honor  to  follow  the 
argument  of  these  lectures,  will  know  how  in- 
145 


146'  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

slant  and  decisive  must  be  our  answer.  With 
regard  to  this  supreme  function  of  the  pastor's 
life,  as  of  every  other,  we  are  to  maintain  our 
constant  point  of  view  and  line  of  thought. 

For  another  way  of  stating  the  same  theme 
would  be:  the  pastoral  spirit  in  the  pulpit. 
What  we  have  to  recognize  and  magnify  is 
precisely  the  same  attitude  and  temper  of  mind 
and  heart  in  preaching  which  we  have  endeav- 
ored to  trace  in  every  other  department  of  pas- 
toral duty. 

Preaching  may  be  textual,  after  the  great 
manner  of  Maclaren,  or  topical,  like  that  of 
Liddon;  it  may  be  expository  or  hortatory;  its 
style  may  be  that  of  the  quiet  homily,  or  it 
may  flash  with  that  occasional  "  stab  of  flame," 
to  use  Lowell's  epithet,  which,  in  such  sermons 
as  those  of  Jeremy  Taylor  or  Horace  Bush- 
nell,  marks  the  inspiration  of  genius  and  de- 
notes the  supreme  spiritual  insight  and  appeal  ; 
but  in  any  and  every  case,  true  preaching  will 
embody  something  of  the  essence  of  the  pas- 
toral spirit.  Human  comradeship  and  Christly 
sponsorship  will,  in  their  unique,  pastoral 
blending,  at  once  warm  and  elevate  the  pulpit 
utterance. 

Speaking  thus,  I  suspect  myself  of  too  far- 


THE  PASTOR    AS  PREACHER  147 

fetched  phrase,  and  must  enter  my  own  de- 
murrer against  anything  which  may  seem 
stilted  or  visionary  in  the  remarks  thus  intro- 
duced. 

I  have  no  sharper  dread,  in  concluding 
these  simple  addresses,  than  that  of  having 
appeared  to  present  in  them  some  transcen- 
dental or  overwrought  pastoral  ideal,  remote 
from  the  actual  pulse-throb  of  men  in  our 
red-blooded  time.  But  we  have  sought  to  be 
Scriptural.  It  is  true  we  have  set  our  pro- 
fessional standard  high;  but  so  also  does  the 
New  Testament.  We  have  found  our  sine 
qua  non  for  the  pastorate  to  consist  in  a  spe- 
cific and  highly  charged  state  of  mind — a  fire 
of  fellowship  at  once  with  Christ  and  with 
men;  but  the  New  Testament  insists  on  this 
also;  and  the  mood  itself,  thus  identified,  is 
not  mystical  or  extravagant,  but  natural  and 
sane. 

So  in  particular  of  the  pastor  in  the  pulpit. 
The  pastoral  spirit,  as  I  conceive  it,  does  im- 
part to  preaching  a  unique  and  exalted  tone; 
but  that  tone  is  not  rhapsodic,  any  more  than 
it  is  ofificially  presumptuous  or  sanctimonious. 
The  pastoral  spirit  in  the  pulpit  is  eminently 
spontaneous,  simple,  practical;  earnest,  surely. 


148  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

even  to  a  white  heat,  but  without  loss  of 
human  perspective.  It  is  tender  but  not  tame ; 
free  because  so  nobly  fraternal;  wise  because 
of  real  knowledge  of  the  people;  spiritually- 
vital  because  charged  with  the  peculiar  ardor 
of  the  Christly  shepherding. 

We  make,  therefore,  to-day  no  attempt  to 
introduce  a  novel  theory  of  preaching  or  to 
present  any  remodeled  picture  of  the  preacher. 
On  the  contrary,  we  are  to  reassert  that  an- 
cient and  constant  view  of  the  pulpit  office 
which  is  confirmed  by  the  noblest  traditions 
of  the  Church,  and  expresses  the  deepest  intui- 
tion of  its  ministers. 

Following  a  simple,  three-fold  division,  we 
will  remind  ourselves  first  of  what  Christian 
preaching  is ;  then,  secondly,  of  its  "  audi- 
ence " — who  constitute  its  hearers ;  finally  and 
more  specifically,  in  the  third  place,  we  shall 
thus  be  prepared  to  ask  how, — preaching  be- 
ing what  it  is,  and  the  congregation  being 
what  it  is, — that  particular  temper  which  we 
have  described  as  pastoral  may  dominate  the 
situation  thus  presented,  modulating  the 
preacher's  message  and  matching  it  both  with 
the  man  who  speaks  and  with  the  man  who 
listens  ? 


THE  PASTOR   AS  PREACHER  149 


WHAT  IS  PREACHING  r 

I  am  seeking  no  original  or  exhaustive  defi- 
nition, but  will  confine  myself  to  the  mention 
of  the  three  factors  which  always  enter  into 
that  form  of  religious  address  known  as  Chris- 
tian preaching. 

I  St.  The  content  of  the  message; 

2nd.  The  personality  of  the  preacher; 

3rd.  The  immediate  occasion  and  present 
need  of  the  people. 

Let  me  make  three  citations  from  three 
great  pulpit  masters,  of  different  types,  which 
will  bring  out,  in  their  order,  these  three  chief 
and  constant  factors  of  true  preaching.  I  will 
select  three  American  ministers — ^perhaps  our 
foremost  names  as  preachers  in  three  great 
Protestant  communions.  They  are  not  now 
living,  but  were  living  not  long  ago,  and  they 
have  been,  each  of  them,  lecturers  at  Yale,  on 
the  Lyman  Beecher  Foundation.  The  first  is 
Bishop  Matthew  Simpson,  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church,  one  of  the  most  eloquent 
men  in  American  history,  concerning  whose 
strange,  half-hypnotic  spell  upon  his  hearers 
we  have  heard  such  almost  incredible  but  un- 
doubtedly authentic  incidents,  surpassing  even 


ISO  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

those  attributed  to  Patrick  Henry  or  to  Henry 
Clay. 

Simpson  says:  "Your  office,  as  preachers, 
is  not  to  speak  as  for  yourselves,  not  to  speak 
words  which  even  the  wisest  men  have  uttered, 
but  simply  to  speak  the  message  which  God 
has  given.  This  message  He  has  put  in  writ- 
ing. It  has  been  printed.  We  have  it  in  our 
hands.  You  are  to  take  these  words  and 
utter  them,  whether  the  people  bear  or  for- 
bear.^' 

This,  then,  is  the  first  factor,  the  content 
of  the  massage^  which  is,  in  a  word,  the  re- 
vealed truth  of  Christ. 

My  second  quotation  is  from  Phillips 
Brooks — and  there  is  no  name  nobler  in  pul- 
pit annals.  He  says,  "  Truth  through  person- 
ality *  is  our  description  of  real  preaching.  It 
is  the  decay  of  the  personal  element  that  makes 
the  ministry  of  some  old  men  weak."  Those 
of  you  who  have  heard  Phillips  Brooks  will 
imagine  how  he  would  look  when  he  said  that ; 
and  the  fire  yet  seems  to  flicker  on  the  pages 
in  which  that  regal  and  rushing  mind  poured 
forth  his  sense  of  the  importance  of  this  per- 
sonal element  of  the  preacher's  power. 
*  Italics  ours. 


THE  PASTOR   AS  PREACHER  151 

My  third  quotation  is  from  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  the  Shakespeare  -of  the  modern  pul- 
pit. With  his  own  unmatched  vitality  of  ex- 
pression, he  fixes  attention  on  the  third  factor, 
viz. :  the  congregation,  the  occasion,  the  need, 
the  practical  end  sought.  He  remarks :  "  A 
preacher  is  a  teacher;  but  he  is  more.  He 
looks  beyond  knowledge  to  the  character  which 
that  knowledge  is  to  form.  It  is  not  enough 
for  him  that  men  shall  know.  They  must  he, 
A  preacher  is  an  artist  of  the  soul"  * 

Citations  like  these  could  be  multiplied  in- 
definitely. They  might  reproduce  a  hundred 
verdicts  upon  the  essence  of  preaching  by  its 
greatest  masters,  recent  and  ancient,  and  in  all 
of  them  we  shall  discover  clearly  set  forth,  as 
in  what  Chrysostom  calls  "  the  lofty,  large 
and  broad  picture  offered  of  these  things  in 
the  Holy  Scriptures,"  these  three  prime  fac- 
tors, always  to  be  recognized  and  adjusted  to 
one  another,  which  make  up  true  preaching — 
the  Christian  content  of  the  message,  the 
Christian  personality  of  the  preacher,  the  im- 
mediate condition  and  need  of  the  hearer. 

Now  even  a  moment's  consideration  of  the 
nature  of  these  factors  brings  sharply  into  the 
*  Italics  ours. 


152  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

foreground  the  vital  relation  which  the  pas- 
toral spirit  bears  to  them,  each  and  all.  Two 
of  them  are  distinctly  personal — the  person- 
ality of  the  preacher  himself,  and  this  is  the 
fastor's  personality,  and  the  personal  need  of 
the  hearer,  and  this  only  the  preacher  as  pas- 
tor knows.  Even  as  to  the  remaining  factor, 
the  content  of  the  message,  we  must  maintain 
that  the  pastoral  sense  of  it  is  the  truest  sense ; 
for  that  content  is,  in  a  word,  the  truth  of 
Christ  as  realized  in  experience,  and  it  is  the 
pastor's  experience  which  effects  such  realiza- 
tion because,  as  we  have  seen,  the  distinctive 
pastoral  consciousness  is  developed  through 
deepening  acquaintance  with  Christ. 

Then,  too,  we  must  remember  that  this 
message  of  Christ  which  preaching  reproduces, 
is  to  be  not  merely  in  some  commonplace  and 
conventional  conception  thereof,  but  in  Christ's 
own  conception  thereof;  that  is,  preaching 
must  present  Christ's  truth,  with  something 
of  His  perspective  of  emphasis.  His  cadence 
in  utterance,  His  aptness  of  personal  applica- 
tion. Therefore,  plainly,  only  one  who  waits 
long  at  the  Master's  feet,  as  the  pastor  must, 
if  he  is  really  a  pastor,  can  realize  intimately, 
and  so  report  justly  this  ensemble  of  Jesus' 


THE  PASTOR   AS  PREACHER  iS3 

teaching,   the  proportions,   the   shadings,   the 
spiritual  rhythm  of  the  Christian  revelation. 

But  the  case  becomes  infinitely  stronger 
when  we  consider  the  personal  factors  of 
preaching.  In  preaching,  the  noblest  of  arts, 
that  of  the  orator,  is  carried  up  to  a  level 
where  the  orator  becomes,  in  a  true  sense,  the 
embodiment  of  his  message.  He  incarnates  it. 
He  incarnadines  it,  to  use  the  same  root  word. 
He  is,  by  Christ's  grace  and  in  Christ's  name, 
the  personal  reincarnation,  in  human  form,  of 
the  spirit  of  that  Gospel  which  he  is  to  pro- 
claim. Preaching  thus  differs  essentially  from 
other  forms  of  oratory.  It  is  not  to  be  treated 
as  a  performance.  The  preacher  stands  for  his 
message  as  well  as  articulates  it.  Art  in 
preaching  is,  after  all,  at  the  bottom  of  it,  the 
art  of  living,  making  manhood  beautiful  and 
so  holding  it — holding  the  whole  man,  clean 
body,  live  brain,  consecrated  spirit,  all  as  one 
piece,  one  lens,  set  in  the  white  light  of  truth, 
letting  God  take  care  of  the  image,  if  only  the 
crystal  itself  can  be  kept  consistent  and  clear. 
But  all  this  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that 
the  pastoral  training  and  attainment  become 
vital  to  the  preacher  and  are  an  essential  ante- 
cedent to  true  preaching. 


IS4  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

We  are  living  in  a  day  when  mere  declama- 
tion counts  for  less  and  less  in  public  speech. 
Over-vehemence  or  easy  glibness  reacts  unfa- 
vorably, and  the  impression  of  sincerity  is  im- 
paired. The  fluent  exhorter,  unaware  to  him- 
self, lays  himself  open  to  some  such  shrewd 
criticism,  to  employ  a  rough  illustration,  as 
that  of  a  New  Hampshire  farmer  who,  after 
listening  to  a  preacher  of  this  sort,  and  being 
asked  for  his  opinion,  remarked,  "  Wall,  he 
talks  consid'abul  ez  I  do,  when  Fm  lyin'  ! " 
What  makes  the  pulpit  message  glorious  is  the 
impression  of  supreme  sincerity,  an  impression 
illustrated  in  its  height  by  the  preaching  of 
such  a  man  as  Phillips  Brooks — a  noble  per- 
sonality, completely  identifying  itself  with  a 
noble  message. 

But  this  identity,  this  sincerity,  is  the  direct 
result  of  pastoral  self-culture.  No  academic 
training,  no  rhetorical  practice  or  elocutionary 
drill  can,  by  itself,  accomplish  that  culture  of 
character  whose  direct  emanation  is  this  utter 
pulpit  sincerity.  Only  the  pastor  can  put  the 
soul  of  the  ministry  into  speech.  Only  the 
pastoral  devotion  to  the  Master  and  to  the 
man  can  create  this  instant  identity  between 


THE  PASTOR   AS  PREACHER  15s 

the  entire  manhood  of  the  speaker  and  every 
filament  of  his  message. 

Here  we  see  how  it  is  that  the  parish  edu- 
cates its  own  preacher.  "  We  don't  pay  our 
debts  to  our  stepping  stones,"  said  a  sagacious 
observer  of  Hfe,  and  we  ministers  sadly  fail 
in  recognizing  our  obligation  to  our  people 
for  that  feature  of  earnest  personal  sincerity 
in  pulpit  utterance  which  they  have  educated 
in  their  minister  as  pastor  and  which  is  more 
than  half  his  strength. 

And  this  is  especially  true  to-day,  when  less 
than  ever  the  mere  echoes  of  the  library  suf- 
fice for  the  pulpit,  when  the  preacher  is  bound 
to  go  forth  into  the  highways  and  byways  of 
the  time  and  bring  back  what  is  most  fine  and 
vital  in  the  actual  experience  of  the  current 
age,  to  supplement  the  lore  of  ancient  days  in 
providing  pulpit  material.  Is  your  sermon 
fresh  and  Interesting  to  yourself?  Not  other- 
wise will  it  touch  your  people.  Would  you 
yourself  take  it  up,  once  it  got  cold,  for  your 
own  pleasure  or  uplift?  If  not,  then  it  is  not 
fit  for  another  man.  The  very  curl  of  the 
crest  of  the  new  age  must  be  in  it,  as  well 
as  the  Inmost  throb  of  your  own  convictions. 


IS6  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

Then  it  will  strike  the  nerve  of  your  neigh- 
bor. And  it  is  the  pastor's  habit  of  meeting 
men  on  the  instant  in  swift  living  colloquy 
which  opens  the  straight  road  to  the  attain- 
ment of  this  fresh  and  practical  vitaHty  in 
preaching. 

THE    CONGREGATION 

But,  further  and  mope  particularly,  true 
preaching,  in  any  complete  or  noble  conception 
of  it,  not  only  strives  to  proclaim  a  true  message, 
not  only  to  incarnate  the  truth  of  that  message 
in  roused  personal  earnestness,  it  also  strives  to 
adapt  the  manner  of  its  utterance  so  as  to  meet 
the  actual  needs  of  the  people  addressed.  In- 
deed, adaptation  is  too  weak  a  word.  "I  am 
made  all  things  to  all  men,  that  I  might  by  all 
means  gain  some,"  cried  the  orator  Paul. 
Preaching  is  not  soliloquy.  Preaching  is  not 
telling  people  what  I  think.  That  is  like  talk- 
ing to  a  fish  instead  of  fishing  for  him.  Preach- 
ing is  stnting  the  heart  of  the  message  to  the 
heart  of  the  man,  through  a  heart  in  yourself 
which  is  in  tune  with  both  message  and  man. 

What  is  the  genius  of  the  Incarnation  }  The 
genius  of  the  Christian  Incarnation  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  embodying  a  higher  spirit  in  the  finest 
forms  of  a  lower  but  current  environment,  for 


THE  PASTOR    AS  PREACHER  157 

the  sake  of  lifting  the  whole  of  that  environ- 
ment to  a  higher  level.  The  genius  of  preach- 
ing seeks  such  an  incarnation  of  adaptation. 

O  fellow-students,  is  it  not  a  thrilling  thing 
to  preach,  or  even  to  try  to  preach  and  fail,  in 
the  glory  of  such  an  ideal  of  preaching  as  this, 
with  a  realized  Christ  behind  us,  so  near  that 
He  can  touch  us,  and  with  the  living  men  of 
to-day  in  front  of  us,  so  near  that  we  can 
touch  them! 

We  must  somehow  burn  in  upon  our  own 
souls  the  conviction  that  our  profession  is 
more  than  a  profession,  more  than  a  vocation 
even,  for  a  vocation  may  be  a  priest's  profes- 
sion. It  is  a  passion,  as  of  one  who  finds  him- 
self Chrisfs  rescue-man.  It  is  an  affair  of  red 
blood  and  white  fire,  demanding,  employ- 
ing all  we  have  and  are,  a  "savor*'  of  life 
unto  life. 

Let  us  look  then  for  a  moment,  directly  and 
intently,  at  that  wonderful,  fascinating,  for- 
midable creature,  the  congregation  itself.  It 
is  more  than  an  audience.  I  am  ashamed  of 
that  thin  word  "  audience,"  as  applied  to  a 
church  full  of  worshippers  and  parishioners. 
What  is  a  congregation?  It  is  an  assemblage 
representing  many  homes  and  families  gath- 


IS8  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

ered  for  the  most  august  and  intimate  of  all 
purposes,  the  worship  of  the  Infinite  God,  an 
assembly  constituting  a  spiritual  fraternity, 
made  such  in  the  Supreme  Name,  Memory, 
and  Power  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Crucified  Re- 
deemer and  Risen  Master,  who  is  believed  to 
be  spiritually  present  and  in  the  vivid  sense 
of  Whose  Presence  everything  is  said  and 
done.  This  is  what  we  say  we  believe.  Such 
a  fraternal  assembly,  I  say,  in  such  a  presence, 
is  waiting  to  hear  a  certain  utterance  which, 
in  the  name  of  this  Lord,  and  sent  through 
the  charged  medium  of  His  commissioned 
servant,  is  to  meet  what?  Some  theoretic  or 
academic  situation?  No, — but  rather  to  meet 
the  actual  shapes  of  moral  and  spiritual  want, 
peril,  pain,  need  and  instant,  practical  crisis 
in  the  several  arenas  of  a  thousand  lives. 

What  a  spectacle!  There  is  nothing  else 
like  it  or  approaching  it  on  the  earth.  Famil- 
iarity with  it  has  dulled  our  minds  to  its 
unique  greatness.  To  the  seeing  eye  and  the 
feeling  soul,  it  is  dramatic  to  the  ultimate  de- 
gree. Yes!  it  is  more  than  dramatic;  it  is 
critical  as  surgery,  sacramental  as  Calvary. 

Look  more  closely  at  these  men  and  women. 
Are  they  alive  to  all  this  ?    Far  from  it.    That 


THE  PASTOR   AS  PREACHER  159 

is  the  criticalness  of  the  situation.     Yet  they 
may  be  made  ahve. 

What  is  the  surface  aspect?*  That  of  an 
eager,  hurried,  sensitive  mass  of  humanity, 
all  in  its  best  clothes  indeed,  and  presum- 
ably in  its  best  spiritual  form  also,  and  yet 
appealing  very  deeply  to  sympathy, — a  thou- 
sand souls  of  every  class,  occupation,  mental 
aptitude, — a  throng  heterogeneous  enough,  yet 
strangely  unified  in  the  rushing  torrent  of  our 
modern  life,  as  trees,  dissimilar,  bend  evenly 
in  a  gale.  Here  are  business  men,  professional 
men,  v^orking  men,  the  rich  and  the  poor, 
young  faces,  old  faces,  sad  faces,  glad  faces, 
mindless  faces — a  pathetic  crowd.  Here  are 
people  trying  to  forget;  here  are  comedies 
without  merriment,  and  tragedies  without  dig- 
nity ;  here  are  grand  men  and  grander  women, 
beaten  down  by  the  flail  of  misfortune;  here 
is  humanity  careless  of  its  glory  and  callous  as 
to  its  shame ;  here  is  the  age  itself,  both  devout 
and  defiant,  both  believing  and  skeptical,  vol- 
canic in  energy,  perturbed  even  in  repose, 
seeking  any  distraction  as  a  relief  from  week- 

*  This  and  the  two  following  paragraphs  are  repro- 
duced from  the  author's  "  Preaching  in  the  New  Age," 
Carew  Lectures,  Hartford  Theological  Seminary,  1900. 
Revell  &  Co.,  1902. 


i6o  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

day  strain ;  volatile  in  sensations,  lashed  by  am- 
bitions, passionately  alive,  though  now  hushed 
because  it  is  Sunday,  driven  by  forces,  novel 
and  splendid,  through  efforts  it  cannot  stop 
to  measure,  toward  ends  it  will  not  lift  itself 
to  see. 

But  all  this  is  not  in  the  average  conscious- 
ness. The  real  mental  mood  is  quiescent,  half 
somnolent  after  the  hot  week.  The  people 
bow,  they  stand,  they  sing — some  of  them,  if 
the  choir  will  give  them  a  chance;  they  are 
outwardly  attentive.  Here  and  there  are  a 
few  really  roused,  religious  minds;  but  the 
average  tone  is  that  of  conventional  decorum 
united  with  a  vague  seriousness.  It  is  the  vast, 
roaring  week-day  world  arresting  itself  for  the 
moment,  and  trying,  rather  dimly,  to  remem- 
ber that  it  ought  to  remember  eternity. 

Look  more  closely  still.  All  this  is  the  sur- 
face aspect.  But  something  more  is  present 
in  this  strange,  tremendous  creature,  the  con- 
gregation. The  congregation  is  really  two 
congregations,  just  as  every  man  is  two  men. 
There  is  an  undertone  in  every  man  in  which 
lies  the  residuum  of  the  ancestral  generations, 
the  rich  sub-soil  of  Christian  civilization. 
Within  yonder  churchgoer  who  seems  so  su- 


THE  PASTOR   AS  PREACHER  i6i 

perficial,  so  careless,  is  a  man  of  latent  sensi- 
bilities, and  faiths,  too,  which,  however  dull 
or  unaware  the  man  is  at  the  moment,  per- 
petuate in  him  the  essence  of  ancient  creed  and 
choral,  the  fragrance  of  ancient  sacraments, 
the  reverberation  of  old  heroisms,  the  valor 
and  patience  of  Christian  centuries.  There  is 
a  unique  and  solemn  splendor  in  the  fact  that 
each  individual  is  a  kind  of  flask  or  crucible 
into  which  all  the  generations  have  poured 
something  of  their  best.  The  Lord's  Prayer, 
the  Triune  Benediction,  the  deep,  old  creed 
phrases,  "  I  believe  in  God,  the  Father  Al- 
mighty, and  in  Jesus  Christ,  His  only  Son, 
our  Lord,"  the  "Gloria,"  the  "  Te  Deum," 
the  "  holy  invocations "  at  the  Christening, 
the  Communion,  the  bridal,  the  burial, — these 
have  recorded  themselves  in  the  very  sub- 
structure of  the  mind  of  the  modern  hearer, 
in  the  most  intimate  and  instinctive  turns  of 
cerebral  process  and  spiritual  aspiration.  The 
invisible  congregation  within  the  visible  is  the 
humanity  which  Christ  Himself  has  touched 
and  is  still  touching  in  the  subtlest,  holiest 
ways. 

You  say  I  am  idealizing  the  congregation. 
No,  I  am  trying  to  tell  the  real,  full  truth 


i62  THE  CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

about  it,  if  we  stand  to  the  mark  of  what  we, 
as  Christians,  allege  that  we  believe. 

Now  it  is  along  these  old  spiritual  channels 
of  mental  association  that  the  pastor — mark 
the  word,  underscore  it,  redden  it,  whiten  it, 
charge  it  with  the  full,  nameless,  pastoral  vol- 
ume of  human  fellowship  and  Christly  media- 
tion— the  pastor,  who  knows  the  people,  loves 
them  and  is  watching  for  them,  man  by  man, 
is  to  pour  the  flood  of  his  echoed  ministry  of 
Christ  to  the  soul. 

Plainly  only  the  pastor  can  do  this,  and 
really  match  his  people's  need.  Here  on  the 
instant  he  is  to  launch  the  eager,  careful  stroke 
that  shall  win  his  man.  All  depends  upon  his 
pastoral  knowledge  of  that  man.  He  is  to 
concentrate  his  whole  self,  his  whole  sense  of 
Christ's  truth,  into  some  arrowshot  of  winged 
syllables  which  shall  go  home.  But  he  must 
know  his  target,  as  only  the  pastor  can  know 
it.  Only  the  preacher,  as  pastor,  can  see  and 
realize  at  once  both  congregations,  that  one 
which  is  outward,  patent,  self-conscious;  and 
that  one  which  is  inward,  latent,  subliminal,  so 
to  speak.  By  the  same  word  he  must  address 
both  the  outward  and  the  inward  hearer  and 
make  that  hearer  aware  of  his  own  inner  self. 


THE  PASTOR   AS  PREACHER  163 

The  pulpit  mood  resulting  from  this  effort 
is  peculiar,  winning,  masterful.  In  its  blended 
tension  and  exhilaration,  its  sense  of  critical- 
ness  and  concentration  upon  an  immediate  er- 
rand, it  is  not  so  utterly  dissimilar,  though  in 
a  far  higher  field,  to  that  which  Harry  New- 
bold  so  wonderfully  puts  into  his  ringing  lines 
about  the  last  inning  on  the  great  cricket  field, 
which  I  cannot  translate  into  the  loftier  dialect 
of  our  own  profession  as  it  realizes  the  sense 
of  crisis  in  pastoral  appeal,  without  a  shiver  of 
the  nerves. 

"There's  a  breathless  hush  in  the  close  to-night, 

Ten  to  make  and  the  match  to  win, 
A  bumping  pitch  and  a  blinding  light, 

One  hour  to  play  and  the  last  man  in. 
And  it's  not  for  the  sake  of  a  ribboned  coat. 

Or  the  selfish  love  of  a  season's  fame; 
But  his  captain's  hand  on  his  shoulder  smote — 

*  Play  up,  and  play  the  game.' " 

Now,  if  something  like  this  which  we  have 
tried  to  indicate  is  the  nature  of  preaching, 
and  if  something  like  this  which  we  have  en- 
deavored to  outline,  is  the  condition  and  need 
of  the  congregation,  what  manner  of  men  are 
we  if  we  do  not  admit  the  pastoral  spirit  and 
temper  not  only  to  a  place  but  to  a  first  place. 


i64  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

in  the  pulpit?  Preach  from  the  texts  of  peo- 
ple's lives. 

I  asked  four  members  of  this  senior  class 
whether  their  most  effective  sermon  was  not 
one  which  they  had  been  led  to  make  as  the 
sequel  to  some  personal  pastoral  effort,  and 
every  one  of  the  four  answered  in  the  affirma- 
tive. I  could  say  the  same;  most  ministers 
could,  I  fancy. 

"  Few  sermons  are  as  long  as  they  seem," 
quaintly  remarks  our  genial  friend  Dr.  Cro- 
thers.  Nothing  but  the  pastoral  sense  of  er- 
rand in  them  will  make  them  seem  as  short  as 
they  really  are.  Not  for  the  "  salvation  of 
sermons,''  as  some  one  has  wittily  said,  but  for 
the  salvation  of  men  does  the  preacher  preach ; 
and  the  men  to  be  saved  are  right  in  front  of 
you,  not  remote  abstractions.  Whether  you 
preach  extemporaneously  or  from  carefully 
written  manuscript  or  from  some  "  dishevelled 
and  dissolute  spatter  of  ink,"  as  my  friend 
Dr.  Kelley,  of  the  Methodist  Review,  once 
called  his  outline  "  notes,"  you  will  employ 
your  method  as  only  your  doorway  to  an 
instant  grapple  with  your  audience.  "A 
preacher  is  a  wrestler  with  men,"  said  Beecher. 
And  the  victory  which  is  sought  is  not  mere 


THE  PASTOR    AS  PREACHER  165 

assent  or  admiration,  nor  is  it  limited  by  the 
conventional  ideal  of  a  sudden  conversion, 
though  it  may  include  that.  We  seek  to  save 
fnen  to  he  men,  vitally,  ethically,  and  all  up  and 
down  the  scale  of  practical  living,  so  that  they 
shall  be  saved  to  truer  thoughts,  kinder  service, 
purer  lives — saved  to  be  better  neighbors  and 
nobler  citizens — saved  to  save  others. 

Now,  the  men  who  are  thus  to  be  lifted 
upon  some  higher  terrace  of  Christ's  broad 
salvation  are  the  men  at  the  instant  pres- 
ent. The  pastor  knows  them;  therefore  he 
can  speak  to  them  of  what  touches  their  ac- 
tual need  and  matches  the  current  of  their 
thoughts.  The  pastor  loves  them;  therefore 
he  can  speak  to  them  with  the  frank  fearless- 
ness of  a  recognized  and  attested  friendship. 
The  pastor  shepherds  them  and  cares  for  the 
little  lambs  in  their  home  folds;  therefore  he 
can  speak  to  them,  with  a  conceded  right  of 
counsel,  and  therefore  also,  if  he  does  speak 
to  them  in  this  pastoral  way,  they  will  listen 
to  him. 

Nor  will  the  intellectual  quality  of  the  ser- 
mon be  at  all  injured  thereby.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  theological  and  literary  elements  of 
discourse,  as  if  they  knew  their  master,  love 


i66  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

to  array  themselves  in  natural  and  effective 
forms  beneath  the  aegis  of  an  errand  of  life — ■ 
vital  fellowship  with  men,  vital  fellowship  with 
Christ,  vital  effort  to  bring  the  real  Christ  to 
the  real  man.  So  the  treatment  of  every  theme 
is  shaped  and  is  modulated  for  its  instant  per- 
sonal errand.  Homiletics  comes  down  from 
its  dusty  pedestal  and  takes  its  lesson  from  the 
wayside  watch,  and  all  the  sermon  is  suffused 
with  the  clear,  firm,  gentle,  brave  quality  of 
the  shepherd's  considerate  care.  Only  if  you 
want  to  hit  a  man  in  this  corner  of  the  church, 
you  will  be  careful  steadfastly  to  look  the  other 
way,  into  the  opposite  corner,  for  the  very 
lUroma  of  the  pastorate  is  courtesy. 

THE    PASTOR   IN   THE   SERVICE 

The  same  pastoral  solicitude  will  appear  in 
all  the  conduct  of  the  church  service  both  be- 
fore and  after  the  sermon.  I  cannot  with  suf- 
ficient earnestness  remind  you,  my  honored 
fellow-students,  that  from  the  first  instant 
when  you  enter  the  pulpit  and  the  service 
opens,  you  are  yotir  people's  pastoral  man. 
Every  tone,  every  inflection,  every  office  of 
reading,  and  pre-eminently  of  prayer,  is  to 
be  bathed  in  the  yearning  earnestness  of  a 


THE  PASTOR    AS  PREACHER  167 

brother  and  sponsor;  and  as  the  service  pro- 
ceeds, the  entire  scenery  of  the  previous  pas- 
toral week  flashes  up  into  its  pulpit  bloom. 
You  will  read  the  Scripture,  whether  the  text 
be  narrative,  lyric,  didactic,  as  if  listening  to 
the  accompanying  recitative  from  a  hundred 
homes.  Your  choice  of  hymns  will  be  the  pas- 
tor's choice.  You  will  pray, — O  my  brothers, 
you  will  pray  as  though  all  your  dumb  con- 
gregation found  its  voice  in  you. 

".     .     .  Hear  his  sighs,  though  mute 
Unskillful  with  what  words  to  pray,  let  me 
Interpret  for  him."  * 

Such  prayer  will  not  be  an  address  to  the 
Lord  or  to  an  audience.  It  will  be  tender  and 
holy — a  comrade's  cry  to  the  Chief  Compan- 
ion— a  sponsor's  call  to  the  Chief  Shepherd. 

"  He  prayeth  best  who  loveth  best 
All  things,  both  great  and  small."  t 

Prayer  should  be  prayer,  not  prolix,  not 
repetitious,  not  garrulous,  not  explanatory,  not 
discursive,  but  brief,  reverent,  gentle,  vital. 
Quaint  George  Fuller  is  not  so  far  from  the 

*  Milton.  t  Coleridge. 


i68  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

mark  when  he  says,  "  In  extemporary  prayer, 
what  men  most  admire  God  least  regard- 
eth.'' 

I  have  heard,  and  you  have  heard,  with  an 
ache  that  went  far  deeper  than  criticism, 
prayers  full  of  a  thin  and  fussy  emphasis, —  no 
dignity  or  reverence,  no  repose,  no  depth  of 
appreciation  of  what  pubhc  prayer  assumes,  no 
real  soul  in  the  prayer.  Such  prayer  is  not 
pastoral  prayer. 

And  just  here  one  word,  by  the  way,  as  to 
the  week-night  Prayer  Meeting,  the  despair  of 
so  many  a  pastor's  heart.  I  know  but  one 
great  rule :  Be  your  whole,  rouse dy  pastoral 
self,  then  go  to  your  chapel  and  let  your  parish 
deal  with  itself  through  you. 

Then,  last  of  all,  the  pastoral  spirit  follows 
the  sermon,  or  rather  follows  it  up,  by  carry- 
ing it  out  into  the  parish,  making  it  the  unob- 
trusive text  for  a  score  of  interviews,  for 
wayside  allusions,  for  genial  turns  of  adminis- 
tration. The  pastor  walks  into  the  sermon, 
and  the  sermon  walks  out  with  the  pastor. 
This  gives  coherence  and  continuity  to  the  en- 
tire ministerial  life.  The  Sunday  service  is 
not  a  weekly  lectureship,  but  a  pastor's  watch- 
fire  on  the  road,  along  which  people  and  pas- 


THE  PASTOR    AS   PREACHER  169 

tor  are  moving  together  in  one  common  and 
constant  march. 

CLOSING   WORD 

Fellow-Students:  It  would  argue  ill  for  our 
consistency  in  following  the  canons  of  con- 
struction adopted  in  the  preparation  of  these 
addresses  did  I  allow  myself  to  loiter  at  their 
close,  or  to  indulge  in  any  vain  attempt  to 
cover  their  homespun  plainness  by  an  ambitious 
finale. 

I  have  tried  simply  to  talk  to  you  as  I  would 
in  my  study  to  younger  brothers,  about  our 
common  calling  on  its  pastoral  side,  finding 
the  germ  of  all  that  I  have  said  to  you  in  what 
you  said  to  me  last  November,  when  you  ex- 
plained to  me  your  own  practical  conception 
of  the  Christian  pastorate  in  our  great  day. 
I  have  not  sought  novelties  or  subtleties.  I 
have  quoted  not  much  from  books;  they  are 
open  to  you.  I  have  quoted  from  yourselves. 
With  your  own  faith  and  feeling  as  a  guide  we 
have,  as  it  were,  stepped  down  together  into 
the  tumult  and  thunder  of  the  great  modern 
arena  which  summons  you.  There  we  have 
sought  to  discover  what  kind  of  pastor  the  age 
needs  and  demands.     We  have  been  thrilled 


170  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

by  the  instant  evidence  that  the  pastor  wanted 
now  is,  as  at  the  first  launch  of  Christianity, 
precisely  the  man  most  trained  and  tuned  into 
fellowship  with  men  through  fellowship  with 
Jesus  Christ. 

This  discovery  fills  us  with  joy,  even  when 
confronted  by  a  task  so  serious  and  strenuous 
as  that  which  now  challenges  a  Christian  pas- 
tor. All  the  time  is  alive,  and  in  a  sense  all 
its  life  is  everywhere.  But  this  is  as  we  would 
have  it.  We  will,  by  Christ's  grace,  bring  the 
world-throb  into  the  heart  of  our  local  par- 
ishes. 

Some  good  men  will  tell  you  that  these  are 
days  of  menace  and  alarm,  and  so  they  are; 
but  the  age  is  Christ's  age,  for  all  that.  In 
all  the  loud  tumult  of  our  rocking  time  He 
still  walks  as  of  old  upon  the  waves  of  Gen- 
nesaret.  His  breath  is  on  the  air,  His  hand 
is  on  the  soul.  That  was  a  true  word  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  who  said  at  the 
great  London  Conference  last  summer,  "  It  is 
an  age  in  which  men  are  seeking  the  spiritual, 
even  when  they  do  not  consciously  accept 
Christianity."  The  age,  dazzled  by  its  own 
fires,  is  yet  stumbling  on  to  meet  our  Christ, 
while  we,  on  our  part,  carrying  Christ  in  our 


THE  PASTOR   AS  PREACHER  171 

hearts,  must  run  forth  to  meet  the  age.  How 
to  make  from  this  superb  wealth  of  fresh  ma- 
terials a  new  ''body  of  Christ,"  this  is  our 
fascinating,  absorbing  errand. 

What  the  age  is  hungering  for  and  search- 
ing after  is  Truth  in  forms  of  Justice,  and 
Right  in  forms  of  Beauty.  We  are  to  exhibit 
in  Christ  this  very  tmion  of  "truth  and 
grace."  I  must  think  that  if  Christ  were  to 
speak  now,  He  would  surprise  us  all  by  how 
much  in  the  modern  world  He  would  approve. 
During  these  many  centuries  His  spirit  has 
been  at  work,  and  He  would  not  disavow  the 
results  of  His  own  working.  He  is  "  stand- 
ing at  this  latter  day  upon  the  earth."  We 
must  detect  and  interpret  His  smile  on  the 
time. 

No  mistake  is  more  serious  than  to  belittle 
current  criticism  and  discussion,  for  surely  the 
spirit  of  God  is  moving  through  the  channels 
of  this  very  discussion  itself,  towards  what 
Albrecht  Ritschl  calls  "the  moral  union  of 
all  men,"  in  which  is  to  be  realized  the  true 
kingdom  of  Christ.  May  we  not  even  believe 
that  in  the  modern  union  of  a  discriminating 
intellectual  temper,  with  a  warm  and  catholic 
altruism,  we  are  to  find  not  only  the  mark  of 


172  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

Christ  on  the  age,  but  even  a  kind  of  resurrec- 
tion of  Christ  Himself.  Doubt  is  not  disbelief. 
The  soul,  like  the  ship,  may  swing  on  its  an- 
chor, yet  be  anchored.  Science,  standing  on 
the  far  rim  of  the  known,  is  silent  in  front  of 
the  newly  realized  vastness  of  the  yet  un- 
known, and  in  that  silence  rational  faith  is 
reborn.  The  social  issue  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury is  to  be  between  a  dream  of  human  fel- 
lowship without  Christ,  and  a  manifestation  of 
human  fellowship  in  Christ.  The  errand  of 
the  church  may  have  heretofore  seemed  for- 
mal; it  is  now  vital. 

You  will  sometimes  be  discouraged  because 
the  avalanche  of  demand  is  so  tremendous. 
Do  not  be  discouraged.  A  republic  is  always 
an  ethical  and  spiritual  battlefield;  but  Christ 
is  the  Captain  of  the  noble  democracy.  So, 
when  you  are  fair  tired  out  with  conflict  and 
effort,  then  "  let  up,"  sit  down  for  a  space, 
fold  your  hands  and  see  things  go,  for  they 
are  going  up,  because  God  lives  as  well  as  you, 
and  lives  in  His  own  world,  and  Christ  is 
"  His  power  unto  salvation." 

Be  sincere,  not  subjectively  merely,  but  in 
outward  impression  also.  Insist  upon  things 
being  what  they  seem,  especially  in  yourself. 


THE  PASTOR    AS  PREACHER  173 

Be  kind,  in  some  fresh  accent  of  reality.  Carry 
your  lantern  in  front  of  your  cudgel,  not  your 
cudgel  in  front  of  your  lantern.  Be  coura- 
geous. When  you  plunge  into  the  jungle  of 
great  towns  and  mingle  with  the  swarms  of 
men,  you  must  still  dwell  in  that  New  Jeru- 
salem of  the  mind  which  every  year  is  laying 
anew  its  "  foundations  of  jasper,"  and  swing- 
ing on  surer  hinges  its  gates  of  pearl. 

Cultivate  noble  professional  friendships. 
"  We  four,"  wrote  the  young  Neander  to  one 
of  his  fellow-students,  "  will  establish  at  Halle 
a  true  *  Civitas  Dei,'  a  City  of  God,  whose 
foundation  forever  is  friendship." 

Most  of  all, — if  one  may  dare  humbly  and 
reverently  to  express  a  sacred  and  divine  thing 
in  a  plain,  human  way, — cultivate  the  sense  of 
companionship  with  Jesus,  the  Christ.  The 
alpha  and  omega  of  the  pastorate  is  there. 

God  with  you,  comrades.  Be  genial  toward 
thoughts  and  toward  men,  but  for  your  orders 
go  up  only  to  Christ  and  to  the  higher  terraces 
of  your  own  spirit,  where  He  walks.  Dare  to 
fling  yourself  out  upon  what  seems  to  you,  in 
Christ's  name,  surely  true.  Maintain  the 
splendid  jet  of  roused  and  ready  power,  in 
nerve  and  brain,  and  in  the  knighthood  of  the 


174  THE   CHRISTIAN  PASTOR 

loyal  soul,  and  so  be  God's  man,  Christ's  man 
in  the  midst  of  the  vast  and  tossing  time.  We 
have,  we  say,  but  one  life  to  live.  Drop  the 
*'  but."    We  have  one  life  to  live. 

So  saying,  I  have  done.  Brothers,  fare  you 
well.  Work  in  love.  Work  to  save.  The 
keynote  to-day  in  our  vocation  is  spiritual 
chivalry.  Make  the  pastorate  glow.  Make 
that  word  pastor  to  entitle  the  supreme  joy 
as  well  as  the  supreme  devotion  of  your  life. 
Christ  is  the  Master-Truth,  the  Master-Power. 
He  sends  you  forth.  He  is  with  you.  In  Him 
fare  you  well. 


Date  Due 


D  4      '46 


H 


iilili'^ 


